Another day, another Dorothy Koomson thriller.
Quick background story about how I came across this author, as I've been rocking with her for over a decade!
The year was 2010, I was a junior in college and I was in London on a study abroad program. We were getting ready to head to Dublin, Ireland via ferry. In the ferry terminal, a few of my friends and I went to the bookstore. I walked around and saw the pastel-colored cover of The Ice Cream Girls. I was immediately attracted to the cover because it had a Black arm on it. I know it sounds crazy, but there weren't many books with Black body parts or faces on them back during that time.
I picked it up and read the plot. "Wow, this sounds very interesting! I better write down the name of this book," I thought. It was about two teenagers who were accused of killing their teacher. One was Black and got off. The other was White and served time and now she's trying to clear her name.
Since I didn't have the time or money to buy the book, I jotted it down and forgot about it...for about five years!
I went on a cruise to the Bahamas in 2015 and FINALLY read the book. It was amazing. It's one of my favorite books. However, what had an even deeper impact on me was the fact that it had a Black woman as the main character. In the early 2010s, I was starting to come into my own as a 20-something woman and I think part of that self-discovery was seeing women who looked like me in books, movies and travel. I'd recently discovered tons of travel blogs and travelogues by Black women and it really was life changing. I remember reading Taming it Down and Kinky Gazpacho and Go Girl! The Black Woman's Book of Travel and Adventure during this time frame and my heart was so full.
I was starving for books about the average, everyday, middle-class Black woman and I didn't even know it. Reading those three books along with The Ice Cream Girls opened my eyes and taught me to look for myself in everything.
Since then, I've read all of Dorothy Koomson's books.
Phew. That was a lot. Sorry!
SUMMARY
Cleo Forsum is being framed for murder. The person who is hurting the people who she knows and loves is doing it in ways that are identical to the murders she writes about on her show The Baking Detective. She has to clear her name, but she can't, because if she does, that means she'd have to reveal her other husband.
MY THOUGHTS
This is the second book of Koomson's that I thought was just okay. As I said before, I've read all of her books and I felt this was lacking. I'd give it a solid C on a letter grade scale of A to F.
Her writing is always great and her plots are always amazing, but this novel was SUCH a slow burn. It kind of felt like nothing was really happening. It wasn't until the last third of the book that things really started to pick up for me. And even then, I thought she should've ended the book on the last chapter and not included the epilogue (it was a SUPER DARK last chapter...don't judge me).
The characters were...meh. I didn't find Heath to be all that believable in his psychopathic ways. The book kind of reminded me of the show/book YOU in some ways with Heath's characters, but I think I would've liked it better if he had Joe Goldberg's reasoning for killing people (at least in the first season) which was to make her life better.
I'm not going to keep it on my shelf. It was a fine book, but not really believable enough for me like her previous novels.
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