I am back with another book review, today it is The Hope That Kills by Ed James. Thanks so much to NetGalley for providing me with a copy of this book for an honest review. As always, all opinions are my own.
This story ended up being a lot darker and more gruesome than I had originally envisioned, so just beware going in.
Basically, this is the story of DI Fenchurch investigating the brutal murder of a girl in a seedier part of London. She was found stabed and left in an abandoned building. The woman has no ID and hasn't been reported missing; no now knows who she is. The case is gruesome enough until Fenchurch is put on it and reminded of his own daughter, Chloe, who went missing 10 years ago and has yet to be found. She would be 18 years old, about the same age as the girl that was murdered.
I won't really say much about plot, because that is a major part of the book, but I do want to talk about the characters briefly, mainly Fenchurch. When I first started the book, I somehow missed the detail that Chloe was his daughter. I read it as an unsolved case that haunts him a decade later. Once you know that it was his daughter, you keep questioning, like he does. Is this next girl Chloe? As they begin to uncover what is really going on, he is desperate to find her.
I really liked how this series has a male detective. I'm all for female detectives but more often than not it is done poorly, so all you see are the struggles of being a female DI in a world of males. I find it will often take away from the story, but not in this case. There are a lot of details that aren't given to you outright, Abi is his ex-wife, but she could have easily been an old flame that he turned against him. Eventually you find out their relationship but some parts made me feel like I was just jumping into the middle of a series, and not the first book of one.
I was all set to give this book four stars, until the ending. I get that it is a series, but we have just barely figured out one small piece of the puzzle and it was the end. I still have no idea who's behind what's going on, or why they're doing it, or where Chloe is, or if she will ever be found. The ending left me with so many questions and no answers, which greatly took away from my overall experience.
Overall, a good start to the series; I'm just not sure if I'll continue on with it myself.