What You Left Behind - Samantha Hayes

(I was provided an ARC by Netgalley and the publisher for an honest review)

Synopsis: Two years after a terrifying spate of teenage suicides, the remote village of Radcote has just begun to heal. Then a young man is killed in a freak motorcycle accident and a suicide note is found among his belongings. When a second boy is found dead shortly thereafter, the nightmare of repeat suicides once again threatens the community. 

      Desperate for a vacation, Detective Inspector Lorraine Fisher has just come to Radcote for a stay with her sister, Jo, but the atmosphere of the country house is unusually tense. Freddie, Jo's son, seems troubled and uncommunicative, and Jo is struggling to reach out to him. Meanwhile, Lorraine becomes determined to discover the truth behind these deaths. Are they suicides, or is there something more sinister at work? Finding answers might help Freddie, but they'll also lead to a shocking truth: whatever it is--or whoever it is--that's killing these young people is far more disturbing than she ever could have imagined, and unraveling the secret is just as dangerous as the secret itself. "

This was a nice change up from the last books I read, cause it was a thriller, something non supernatural after my long string of supernatural books I have devoured. 

However, I had a really hard time getting into the book. It started off kinda slow, and even if I told myself that's how it usually is, since you're getting to know the characters and all, I sometimes felt that it was all over the place. It got better the more I got into the story, the clearer the purpose of everyone got, but it just didn't catch me the way I hoped it would. The story got better the more you got into the whole mystery and who's doing what, who's involved with whom etc. At some point you start to wonder yourself what really happened, and what the glimpses were that you saw at the very beginning of the. The end actually was really good and likeable for me. 

The writing itself took some getting used to, but it wasn't bad at all. I think overall I was missing the connection I wanted to feel with the characters. Not sure what the issue was, but there wasn't one character that I really connected to or felt close to. It was slightly detached from everything.

Overall, another just okay book for me in the end, even though I wanted it to be more. I wouldn't say I will never pick up a book by Ms. Hayes again, because in the end it was a good book, it just didn't convince me to be overly excited about it.

Always yours,

Yvi