56 Days

My second pandemic story and back to back no less. I find I enjoy looking back on the early days of the global pandemic. Staying home with family, work and school suspended, loads of puzzles, books and binge watching. It's all here, the crazes at the super markets then the deserted shops, the fight to find hand sanitizer and the wiping down of every package we brought inside. I enjoyed reading about those shared experiences and in this case as far away as Dublin. Add in a dead body, then switch up the the timeline and POV- one chapter it's today and there's a moldering corpse, the next it's the meet cute 56 days prior. Then the author brilliantly gives us the same scenario over the subsequent 56 days from both character's perspectives. But not so much that it's repetitive. It feels like you're part of their secrets- of which there are several. And they are doozies. This was a great read if you're ready for the pandemic as a setting or perhaps a plot twist. I was definitely ready and this story really worked for me. Quite the ingenious co-mingling of ideas. Highly recommend.

Glad I waited a bit on this one. The COVID piece of the story felt very strong-from wearing masks to wiping down all groceries. Looking back, it is a perfect photograph of how life was during lockdown. The thriller portion went in a direction I didn't expect. The writing style was a bit confusing at first jumping back and forth in time and following different perspectives (but not from first person). But once I got it, the pages didn't stop turning, and I finished it all in pretty much one sitting. Glad to check out this author's other work!

This is the first Covid novel I've read, and Catherine Ryan Howard uses lockdown as a great literary and mystery device. Two people (who have just started dating) enter lockdown together. Only one will leave alive.

The novel jumps between perspectives and time frames until you get the broader picture. This was sometimes jarring and frustrating (especially when you had to read through the same scene from a different perspective), but on the whole 56 Days is a twisty, well written, fast paced mystery/ thriller. The irony is not lost on me that I read this through my 3rd lockdown (everyone in my household got out alive though - despite homeschooling