First things first I need to say a massive thank you to Headline for accepting my request to review this title on NetGalley, and to NetGalley for the service they provide.
If you've been following my blog over the last month, you'll know that when I review thriller/murder mystery type of novels, I try to give as few spoilers as possible. Because of this, I will be posting a spoiler filled review on the tenth of February, a week after this book releases. If you read the book in the next week, check that review out and we can chat about it!
But until I can publish that review, there isn't really much that I can say about 'Crash & Burn', because it is an absolute rollercoaster. We start off the story with Nicky Frank, as her car sails off a road, straight down into a ravine. Nicky feels weak and considers giving up, resigning herself to a bloody fate in a car wreck in a raging storm, when she suddenly remembers Vero. Nicky drags herself from the car, back up the ravine, where she tells everyone that the little girl, Vero, is missing. A police search ensues, as they trawl the ravine for the missing six year old girl, but all is not as it seems, and this is no simple drunk driving accident...
I have read a lot of thrillers in my time, and I can normally formulate a guess, working out what is happening - or quite close to it - pretty early on. For the first half of this novel, I thought that I had it completely sussed, so I did find that it was dragging; there was over half of the novel left and I'd already got it all worked out, so I couldn't see where the book was going to go. However, then there was a bit of a twist that changed all of my preconceptions, throwing the whole novel back into turmoil.
This is the first Lisa Gardner novel I've ever read, but I am going to go out and get as many of the rest of them as I can. Her writing style is utterly addictive - she lays such a carefully constructed path so that you think you've worked everything out, while the real plot is bubbling away in the background completely undetected - and all of her characters are so well constructed. The relationship between Nicky and her husband, Thomas, had me guessing and re-guessing over and over, and this was one of the first books that had me questioning everything up until the very end.
Normally, a book of this length would take me three or four days to read, but I managed to read 'Crash & Burn' in just over a day, because it was so utterly addictive. If you pick this book up - and I highly recommend you do - you need to set aside a good section of the day, because this is not a novel that you're going to want to dip in and out of; this is a novel that you're going to want to devour whole.
I do have a lot more feelings about this novel - all positive feelings - but I don't want to say too much more in case I ruin the plot, so I'm going to stop this here and write everything else in my spoilery review, so please check that out if you're interested, but seriously, go and read this book!
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