A review by lostcupofstars
Thirteen by Steve Cavanagh

adventurous challenging dark mysterious sad tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.75

This was good and had the potential to be a really excellent read. I don’t normally read crime fiction but this came highly recommended. The plot was really well thought out - even while knowing that the killer is on the jury, there are still a number of things that keep you on your toes. 
Where it let itself down was the character development. I know that this is #4 in a series of books about this same lawyer, but they can also be read a stand-alone books. I think there are way too many characters, very few of which are developed and this means that some of the parts that are supposed to be shocking don’t land the way they should. I found myself having to flick back to figure out who the reveal character was and what I had missed. 
The action scenes were also really hard to follow, a little bit too much was left to the imagination and I had to keep rereading paragraphs to understand what had happened.
THAT being said, I did enjoy reading this. The things I listed stopped it from being a 5 star read, but once I hit the 60% point I had to finish it and stayed up til 3am to do so. 
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