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A review by tinaha083
A Madness of Sunshine by Nalini Singh
4.0
4.25 STARS!!!!!
I’m not really sure why people are calling this a thriller. This isn’t a thriller. This is a good, whodunit, mystery/police procedural. Anahera returns home to her remote village eight years after running away from family secrets. A young girl goes missing in an eerily similar way that some other women have gone missing. A cop with a past, who’s escaped to this remote area to hide from said past, is there to investigate in a town full of secrets. Secrets, secrets, and more secrets. The town is rife with them. Everyone is hiding something and, in the fashion of small towns, they don’t let the outsiders in. So our cop, Will, turns to Anahera for help.
I really liked Ana and Will. Their interactions as two people struggling with self-disillusionment and anger really worked for me. I enjoyed the multitude of characters, from Miriama, our missing girl, to Josie, our heroines best friend. Singh managed to craft a believable small town claustrophobia, complete with nosiness and gossip, while dealing with the subjects of grief, loss, wildness, and what home is. For a first attempt at a mystery, she did really well.
The setting plays a role all on its own. It’s beautiful, but treacherous. Welcoming, but destructive. A place for tourists to go and experience nature at the same time being a place where tourists go and don’t make it home. You feel the spray of the sea, the slipperiness of the rocks, the thorns and density of the bush. It lives all on its own.
The mystery itself was predictable in some ways but that didn’t stop me enjoying finding out the whys and wherefores and the how. This is common in seasoned mystery readers. Anyone who is one will see some of it from miles off, but miss other things entirely. Which I did.
In short, this was fun. Dark, disturbing, and a couple of times just plain creepy, but fun to read. I’ll definitely be checking out any other mysteries she chooses to write.
I’m not really sure why people are calling this a thriller. This isn’t a thriller. This is a good, whodunit, mystery/police procedural. Anahera returns home to her remote village eight years after running away from family secrets. A young girl goes missing in an eerily similar way that some other women have gone missing. A cop with a past, who’s escaped to this remote area to hide from said past, is there to investigate in a town full of secrets. Secrets, secrets, and more secrets. The town is rife with them. Everyone is hiding something and, in the fashion of small towns, they don’t let the outsiders in. So our cop, Will, turns to Anahera for help.
I really liked Ana and Will. Their interactions as two people struggling with self-disillusionment and anger really worked for me. I enjoyed the multitude of characters, from Miriama, our missing girl, to Josie, our heroines best friend. Singh managed to craft a believable small town claustrophobia, complete with nosiness and gossip, while dealing with the subjects of grief, loss, wildness, and what home is. For a first attempt at a mystery, she did really well.
The setting plays a role all on its own. It’s beautiful, but treacherous. Welcoming, but destructive. A place for tourists to go and experience nature at the same time being a place where tourists go and don’t make it home. You feel the spray of the sea, the slipperiness of the rocks, the thorns and density of the bush. It lives all on its own.
The mystery itself was predictable in some ways but that didn’t stop me enjoying finding out the whys and wherefores and the how. This is common in seasoned mystery readers. Anyone who is one will see some of it from miles off, but miss other things entirely. Which I did.
In short, this was fun. Dark, disturbing, and a couple of times just plain creepy, but fun to read. I’ll definitely be checking out any other mysteries she chooses to write.