A review by redheadbookgirl
The Craftsman by Sharon Bolton

challenging dark mysterious tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? No

4.0

This was one of my highly anticipated spooky reads for this month and it was definitely chilling 🔎 Dark, disturbing + eerie, this was a captivating and unique police procedural thriller with a twist— a witchcraft aspect! Two timelines, thirty years apart, follow a macabre crime and it’s copycat, and this is not for the claustrophobic!🫠

The storyline gave me massive TWILIGHT (Peter James) vibes and kept me guessing till the very end but there was just a little something missing that I can’t put my finger on.. it had the police investigations, the dark and gory murders + the eerie settings, all aspects of a thriller I LOVE but I’d describe the pacing as slow to medium, which was probably a contributing factor to why I didn’t enjoy it as much as I’d been hoping to. I just didn’t get that urge to keep picking it up. Nevertheless it was still an intriguing and compelling read!

I think sometimes it’s a case of right book, wrong time, and I am exhausted following a run of shifts. Maybe I’ll listen to the audio version in the future! 

We can’t love them all, but I’ll definitely be reading some others of Bolton’s work🫶🏽

— 𝑬𝒇𝒇𝒚 @𝒓𝒆𝒅𝒉𝒆𝒂𝒅𝒃𝒐𝒐𝒌𝒈𝒊𝒓𝒍 🦇