A train station. A parting. That’s where this book starts with two characters who we’re just meeting and getting to know who they are to each other. And it’s a great opening to a novel, the atmosphere of the station conveyed through well-observed description, the couple static and composed in a sea of travellers, waiting for the moment where one of them departs. But before the separation inevitably happens, a promise is made to meet in the future in this place at a specific time and as the time draws near, in the countdown to the date is where the real action of the book begins.
Shift forward then to the few days before the meeting. We follow the separate lives of the two people: Weston and Isabella. It is Weston who is the more mysterious of the two, Isabella having followed her medical aspirations and is now a top surgeon in Boston. Weston, however, is pursuing danger somewhere else in a composed, methodical way reminiscent of a super spy and there is a question as to whether he will be able to meet the promise that he made to Isabella ten years previously. There is also the chance that he might be bringing the danger inadvertently to Isabella and so, we’re in a tense situation where Weston’s world and Isabella’s may collide but not with a reconciliation in a railway station.
This was a good thriller which was original in the threat it presented and how it manifested itself. The descriptions of the damage the threat inflicted made me wriggle in discomfort reading them but not so much that I had to stop reading. The dialogue which Coll uses between Weston and Isabella at the start of the book had me gripped, it was so well-delivered and realised and simmered with hidden emotion. The book is well-paced, ending on a cliffhanger with the next in the series being released later this year. It left me wanting to know more, as little threads of plot were teased out from the narrative all the way through but not necessarily tied off. I can only hope that this was done with a view to tying them all together as the series progresses.
I, for one, would like to read more and will be looking out for when the next book in the series is out.
Rachel Rating:
This review was first published on Reedsy Discovery where I was privileged to read it as an ARC.
Scuffed Granny 