Closer Than You Think by Karen Rose

I needed a break from Literary Fiction and from books pretending to be Literary Fiction (like the one I am trying to read, but is only frustrating me). So I picked up a guilty pleasure read - a crime thriller!

Faith is on the run. Someone is trying to kill her. She has changed her name, quit her job, sold everything she had left after the apartment block she was living in burnt down, and returned to her grandmother's house - a place that scares her almost as much as her stalker does. But something dreadful is happening in the basement. Enqueue drum roll!

The plot was good. Crime novels are usually very formulaic, as in, when you have read enough of them, you can pick up the most subtle of clues. This one keep me juggling my suspect list. I enjoyed that. It was also exceptionally suspenseful in the beginning. I read until sparrow-fart in the morning. Always a good sign.

I liked Novac because, for some reason, he looked like Erik Skarsgard in my mind, and that was going to give him browny points. But... I can't say he did anything special to deserve the ranking of superhero. His decisions were not based solely on logic but 'gut' which, let's face it, is just a mucho term for 'emotionally based guess work'. But, what the hell. I will let him off the hook. Now, I know I am meaner with female characters and that is because I am tired of my gender being reduced to the 'damsel in distress role'. So, let me talk about Faith. She sounded strong. When you heard about everything that happened to this female, you have to give her credit. But that is mostly where it stops. For a huge chunk of the book she became a gravitationally impaired being. Granted, I have never had a psychopath try and bump me off, but I am sure that my knees would not keep caving in like that. The other characters did make up a lot though. There were definitely some more believably strong ladies on that task force.

Gripe: I am soooooooo glad that I am not relying on these two to rescue my ass. If they had put enough time into trying to find the missing girl as they did in trying to shag, the plot would have been solved in 200 pages, max. Oh, and don't please get me started on the 'it's true love and we have only known each other less than a day' thing. Did nobody learn from Romeo and Juliet?

Ok, this review is starting to sound mean. Oddly enough I actually enjoyed reading it. It has been a looong time since a crime thriller had me so undecided. And the pacing, in the beginning especially, was really fast. This was just what I was after actually. I wanted a break from books that need Eng Lit degrees to understand (or pretending to be such books). Fun, fast and, for a crime thriller, well constructed plot-wise.

This was the 66th book I have read for the 2015 TBR Pile Reading challenge.

I gave this 3 stars on Goodreads, One star was knocked because of the instant love and gravity issues.