Content Warnings: sexual Assault mentioned; Sexual Harassment; Sexual Manipulation; Bullying, Adult bullying; Mild Violence; Murder; Death; Bloody Death, Bad B
What if a prank leads to nothing?
What if a prank leads to murder?When Freya arrives at her dream job with the city's hottest start-up, she can't wait to begin a new and exciting life, including dating her new colleague Jay.
However, Nicole, Jay's ex and fellow employee, seems intent on making her life a misery. After a big deadline, where Nicole continually picks on her, Freya snaps and tells Jay about the bullying and together they concoct a revenge prank. The next morning, Nicole is found dead in her apartment . . .
Is this just a prank gone wrong? Or does Freya know someone who is capable of murder - and could she be next?
This book was not what I expected. I was really excited by the idea of a Pact, but it was not much of a pact. There's no real pact, I got so excited, but a pact takes at least two consenting adults. The title comes from different pacts, but it was let down. I got so excited for the title, it just wasn't what I was hoping for. Now, that I've lowed your expectations now for a fair review. It's not the book's fault that I had hoped for something else.
There is a lot of characters introduced, some that have very little effect of the plot, so the emphasis seems obvious misdirect. We have two POV characters, Isla a crime Journalist and Freya a newly graduated Computer Programmer who has just got her dream job but things go wrong quickly when her boss decides to bully her over some guy. The POV jumps time a lot, everything is framed in terms of the murder which works pretty well.
Fun fact: Apparently, this book is set in the past. You see Freya is a Millennial at 22 but her thirty-something boss is not. Now there's some debate but that debate makes Freya Gen Z. Born between 1981 – 1996 is the given, some go straight to 1999, but someone whose Thirty is definitely Millennial. I don't how old Heydenrych but it makes me think she not Millennial because Millennials are very aware they are in their thirties now. We're so old. It was an odd line anyway. I get why it's there but doesn't fully work.
This book has a lot going on. The bullying in the work place, by someone who is senior to Freya if not her direct boss. Your boss bullying you in your dream job does seem like a nightmare. Bullying books usually lack stakes which obviously this one has stakes. It also deals with living with the trauma of sexual assault and the threat of sexual assault that women face in their daily lives.
Heyenrych talks about wanting to show the power and intensity of women friendships, but there's so much about being unminded by men that doesn't really feel like the focus. I feel like having both Isla and Freya have 50% doesn't work, I feel it has to one or the other. There's a lot of Heydenrych wants to say. Freya's friendships do not feel the focus. I wish they were, that was the sort of book I hoped this book to be.
The solution of this works fine, but one of the major leads up to giving the characters a solution feels very tacked on and unnecessary. I do have thoughts, but it feels too much of a spoiler to discuss it in a review. Maybe I add spoiler section on Goodreads.
Overall, I give this 3/5 stars for Lace Cuffles. I was slow getting into this book, I read several graphic novels and audiobooks during the time it took me to read it, then read the majority of it one day after reading 10 pages or so a day then with big breaks, so I know that can affect how a book reads. I would read Heydenrych again, which I think is the biggest sign of whether a book was worth reading.
Isla also has Attention Deficit Disorder, it is mention only once and see nothing in the text to support it but I don't have ADD so I might have missed things.
I got this book for review off NetGalley and it is being published by Zaffre on 28/11/2019.
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