Blurb: Jackson Brodie has relocated to a quiet seaside village in North Yorkshire, in the occasional company of his recalcitrant teenage son Nathan and ageing Labrador Dido, both at the discretion of his former partner Julia. It’s a picturesque setting, but there’s something darker lurking behind the scenes. Jackson’s current job, gathering proof of an unfaithful husband for his suspicious wife, seems straightforward, but a chance encounter with a desperate man on a crumbling cliff leads him into a sinister network-and back into the path of someone from his past. Old secrets and new lies intersect in this breathtaking new novel, both sharply funny and achingly sad, by one of the most dazzling and surprising writers at work today.
It’s a slow burn to start with but I don’t mind that, I like getting to know the characters and starting to see where the connections are but I was always aware that something bigger was coming.
“It was funny how so many men were defined by their downfall. Women hardly ever. They didn’t fall down. They stood up.”
One of Kate Atkinson’s strengths is her characters and making them feel real, no matter how often they appear, every character is detailed and has life in them.
“His life had been a litany of disasters. What if he was already on his ninth life? The last go round. Perhaps he should be more cautious.”
Jackson’s sarcasm and pessimistic view of the world is the main reason I connect so well to his character. I also really connected with Reggie and Ronnie the two detectives that were assigned to investigate potential leads in an old case. They’re witty and determined and some of their quotes just spoke to me.
“Reggie sometimes wondered if a day would ever go by when she wasn’t disappointed in people.” – such a mood
Everything is cleverly wound together and as usual Jackson finds himself in the middle trying to put all the pieces together. I enjoyed all the references to the older books in the series but you don’t have to have read them to get into this book.
“Reggie was twenty-six, but she didn’t think that she had ever been the right age.”
I really enjoyed this book, I love a good mystery and trying to work things out for myself! I will always love everything that Kate Atkinson writes, she is brilliant no matter what the genre.
We Are Just Stories 