A Slow Fire Burning

4.5 stars. The long awaited new Paula Hawkins has arrived, and it really is what it says on the tin. A slow burn. If you expect twists and turns and jump scares on every page, you will be disappointed. This story takes its time to build characters, relationships and backstory - and if you have the patience, it all comes together in the end and I think it has a decent payoff.

I loved how one of the strongest characters was a usually disregarded woman in her 80's. Life for a woman doesn't begin and end in her twenties, and Hawkins included a range of female protagonists in all stages of life who had agency and motives.

Despite the lukewarm reviews, I thoroughly enjoyed my time with this audiobook. It helped that it was narrated by the sublime Rosamund Pike.

A bit of a strange one this. The overall plot was simple; what complicated it was the continual messing around with the timeline and the dipping into the two different narratives of the past events which made it difficult at times to keep a line on who was still alive at the time of a particular perspective.
There were some lighter moments when the author seemed to poke fun directly at herself (character writes a novel with a disjointed narrative and worries if people might find this confusing – in a novel with a confusingly disjointed narrative). Mix with this some poorly written side characters (the spotty copper who is willing to spill the beans on the ongoing investigation to a man who clearly should have been a suspect), I can't help wondering if this could have been better if she had gone all out to write it as a comedy farce. Or perhaps she did and I just missed it..?