Wednesday 18 June 2014

Book Review: The Long Fall by Julia Crouch

If someone likes to play game called "Danger" is when you leave them on the curb.

How far would you go to protect your secrets?

Greece, 1980

Emma takes part in a shattering, violent event. An event to which she is anything but an innocent bystander.
She is only eighteen, but this marks her fall from innocence.
It will haunt her for the rest of her life.


London, now

Kate has the perfect existence: a glossy image, a glamorous home, a perfect family.
But there are cracks.
All is not what it seems.

And now the two worlds are about to collide.
Somebody's out for revenge.
Someone who has been waiting thirty years...


I didn't really enjoy read this book much. It was alright but I got bored and frustrated whilst reading, mainly during the third Part. There were somethings I liked about this novel, the actual format was good.

It split into three parts, one switching between the diary of Emma and then third person narration Kate's life. Then the Part Two, is solely Emma and then Part Three is just Kate. I liked the diaries there were done well enough. The writing was well enough. It's plot and characters that get me down.

Okay, Emma can be seen as being naive and not being able to see warning signs but Kate is adult with experience. She does no checking and blindly follows someone with dodgy past. The scheme is overly complicated. Kate is meant to be really smart, at least in educational sense but none of that is reflected in her actions. I also found it hard to sympathise with Kate at all, I think it the way she was written and her thought path. Characters do stuff for no apparent reason that never plays into the story and have complete personality makes over, that whilst fit with the plot make me wonder why Kate was so trusting.

There is the effect to have a twisty turny plot but it just kinda fell flat with me. I think the opening prologue thing was a mistake because it makes what happens obvious so I start to wonder when they would just get to that part and how it would play into the story. Now that can be a prostive thing but I don't think it worked with this story. Generally, I thought the thing that connect Emma and Kate was dumb and never got Emma's reasoning (if I say more we get into spoiler zone).

Overall, I gave this book 3 out of 5 stars for luckless charms. I can't really say I enjoyed reading this as I had to focus myself through at lot. The second half of this book lets it down and which is disappointingly as I do like the format of the book and the certain plot points if done differently would have been great. I would give Crouch another chance.

I got this book off BookBridgr for Review.  It being published by Headline on the 19th June 2014 (tomorrow).

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