Falling - Emma Kavanagh

(2014) 

Genre: Thriller/Fiction
Synopsis:  A plane falls out of the sky. A woman is murdered. Four people all have something to hide. Jim is a retired police officer, and worried father. His beloved daughter has disappeared and he knows something is wrong. Tom has woken up to the news that his wife was on the plane and must break the news to their only son. Cecilia had packed up and left her family. Now she has survived a tragedy, and sees no way out. Freya is struggling to cope with the loss of her father. But as she delves into his past, she may not like what she finds.


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Review: Falling has to be the most unthrilling, slow-paced thriller I have ever read. That's not to say I didn't enjoy it, but I did spend a significant portion of the book expecting the pace to ramp up and it never really did. Fortunately it's written with a style that compliments a gentle pace immensely - Kavanagh possesses the ability to depict simple, every day actions with great artistry and finesse. Just reading the book and getting lost in the prose was a tremendous pleasure, and for that alone I would recommend it.

The plot and the characters, however, left me unsatisfied. As I said, quite unthrilling, for a mystery/thriller novel. There were no huge twists, and nothing too original in the plot. It certainly wasn't bad, not by any stretch of the imagination, but I was surprised by how straight-forward everything turned out to be. A couple of minor twists prevented it from being unsatisfying.

The characters, for the most part, were a little dull. I loved Cecilia, though I felt her story would have been more at home in a whole other book of its own. It took me quite a while to warm to her, but I can also relate to her struggle to bond with her child, in the sense that I feel no innate attachment to children and no desire to ever have any. I've read reviews which characterized her as innately unlikeable, and that is exactly why I think she is such a good character - she's flawed and her attitudes do leave a bad taste in your mouth, but you slowly come to see things from her perspective and begin to sympathize. The fact that I've dedicated my character paragraph pretty much to one character says all you need to know about the others.

Not a bad book, not what I expected and that may have biased my review, but definitely worth a read. Just don't push it to the top of your To Be Read list.

Rating: 3/5