A review by wordsofclover
Eye for An Eye by M.J. Arlidge

challenging dark mysterious tense slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

In this gripping thriller, we follow the lives of several people who were high profile criminals - convicted of horrific crimes as children or teens - and now after serving their sentence, are living as free people again under new names and the watchful eye of the strained probation services. But someone is leaking information to the victims’ families and one by one, the criminals are being hunted down and made to pay for their crimes. 
 
This was a very good audiobook listen - it’s very dark at times with some descriptions of horrible past crimes towards vulnerable people, as well as current depictions of violence or other bad behavior that is stomach-turning. However, I thought this book was really good at posing the question of what does justice really mean, especially for people who lost loved ones and feel the perpetrators got away too easily. It also highlights the incredible train that probation services are under trying to look after these people, who often make that job very hard, and how men and women are put in unsafe situations during a duty of care and potentially not treated very well by there employers if something goes wrong. Not to mention that for so many young criminals, failure of care in the home (and the failure of government authorities to step in ) is such a big factor into why they turn to crime or violence in the first place. 
 
I enjoyed this and I did like the inclusion of Emily (and potentially Courtney?) as an example of a person who really has changed their life around and out of all the criminals we read from, deserved that chance the most. 
 
One of my only gripes with this book is that I definitely think it was too long, gripping as it was things did begin to wane for a me a little bit near the end and I was ready for the story to hurry up and get to the conclusion. 
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