56 Days, a review by Tanya

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🦠🦠🦠
56 Days
Catherine Ryan Howard

305 pages
Published August 17, 2021 by Blackstone Publishing

Amazon | Goodreads

About the Book:

No one knew they’d moved in together. Now one of them is dead. Could this be the perfect murder?

56 DAYS AGO
Ciara and Oliver meet in a supermarket queue in Dublin the same week Covid-19 reaches Irish shores.

35 DAYS AGO
When lockdown threatens to keep them apart, Oliver suggests that Ciara move in with him. She sees a unique opportunity for a new relationship to flourish without the pressure of scrutiny of family and friends. He sees it as an opportunity to hide who – and what – he really is.

TODAY
Detectives arrive at Oliver’s apartment to discover a decomposing body inside.

Will they be able to determine what really happened, or has lockdown provided someone with the opportunity to commit the perfect crime?

My Review:

This was a ‘Bookstagram made me do it’ read!

I’ve seen this book everywhere.  I’ve seen mixed reviews and decided I needed to give it a try.  I was able to get approved on NetGalley for the audio version and put it at the top of my list as my next listen.

As the story started out, I was not interested at all and thinking that it was perhaps going to be a dry romance book.  But once past the first scene, it became more interesting to me and after the first couple of chapters, I was invested.

Dual timelines are just ok for me, in general.  However this story had more than two timelines.  It would go back and forth to different parts of a timeline to unfold the story in a specific way to ensure you don’t learn information before you need to.  It was a little too much for me, all the bouncing around.  Additionally, some scenes would be played twice, once for each character, and so you had to listen to whole scenes two times. I found this really boring and was not a fan.

The good parts about this story are the secrets!  Some you can almost see coming and some you won’t see at all until you are tripping right over them.  That was the fun part!

The backdrop of this story was during Covid and the idea of moving in with someone you barely know during the Covid lockdown is mind-boggling to me and a perfect setup for a murder mystery!  This was a great idea.

Overall, this was an OK read for me.  The set-up of the unveiling timeline was interesting but left a little to be desired in the delivery of the actual unveiling.

Thank you to #BlackstonePublishing and #NetGalley for making this book available for review. All opinions expressed are my own.

 

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