Tuesday 15 March 2016

The Beauty of the End by Debbie Howells

The Beauty of the End by Debbie Howells
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I read the first chapter of this book a couple of months ago and found it interesting; Noah Calaway gets a call from an old friend that he hasn't heard from in a long time. Apparently, Noah's old girlfriend April has killed a man and then tried to kill herself. He believes that she is innocent and travels to where she lives to find out the truth.

I can say that the idea of the book sounded interesting, unfortunately, the idea did not live up to my expectations. I felt that I got a bit of a wrong start with the book, the different timelines, we have the present one and the one where Noah was a teenager. And, suddenly Ella showed up in the story. Bear in mind, I started to read this book without reading the blurb, so I was a bit confused about it and that is totally my fault. That's the problem with ebook, you don't have a backside to read and if you don't look up the book can things like this happens. Anyway, I read the blurb and that cleared things up.

Still, the story just didn't thrill me, it never felt suspenseful in any way and the twists never gave me a wow feeling. The story never got my pulse racing. Well, it did when I was annoyed with stuff, like when police officer Ryder started to suspect Noah. And, I got the feeling that they did it right from the start, despite the fact that Noah hadn't seen April for fifteen years, and he has had no contact with her if you don't count the calls she made to him the murder day that he never got and there is absolutely no evidence at the murder scene to tie him to it. That bothered me, I mean if they had found his fingerprint or blood on the scene would I have bought the fact that they suspected him, but now some far-fetched motive that he felt the need for revenge and kill someone fifteen years later? Come one!

And, the secrets April kept from Noah. Yes, I can understand that she would have a hard time reveal everything to him back when they were together. But, Noah was so incredibly naive that I wanted to hit him over the head so many times during my reading to get him to see the real April. He worshiped her since he was a child and he just couldn't see the true April and that meant that she never dared tell him the truth about herself and everything that she had been through. I mean his best friend Will and April's best friend Bea knew the truth, but Noah just saw a flawless goddess.

One the plus side, it was easy to read the book. I read most of the book during on sitting. The story was interesting enough to want me to finish the book and get the truth and the last part of the book worked better for me than the first 2/3.

I've seen a lot of reviews on Goodreads that give the book high rating so the book works for some. I guess I'm the odd one out in this case...

I want to thank the publisher for providing me with a free copy through NetGalley for an honest review.

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