The Dangerous Kind by Deborah O'Connor

This book starts off so strongly and weaves several storylines together in a convincing way. 

First up we have Jessamine.  A journalist, working on a long running radio series that explores the nature of criminality.  Adoptive mother to Sarah and seemingly quite a relaxed mother who allows her teen a LOT of latitude.  When Cassie Scolari goes missing she gets dragged in to the investigation by Cassie's friend and her whole life seems to go off the rails.  The character herself is supposed to be a mix of tough but vulnerable (expressed through her disastrous love life) but she came across, to this reader, as plain annoying.

Then we have Jitesh.  Technical "genius" who has deferred his first year at Cambridge after a tough time in his last year at school.  Desperate to fit in Jitesh takes to hacking to help him relate to people - yes, this is as creepy as it sounds.  When he gets an internship at the BBC, he meets Jessamine and gets drawn in to the mysterious disappearence.  Damaged beyond belief Jitesh supposedly has a "good heart" but, for me, he came across as being extremely scary and one of The Dangerous Kind that the book blurb warns us about.

Our third main player is Rowena.  Rowena's story is all told in flashback.  A flashback of her early teens in care where she moves in to the orbit of a grooming ring and is terribly abused physically and emotionally by these men.  Having watched Three Girls, Rowena's story feels authentic but I did wonder if that TV programme was the inspiration behind the whole book with a few dollops of Operation Yewtree thrown in for spice.  Rowena is perhaps the best drawn character of the book and you do feel genuine empathy for her throughout.

I really enjoyed the first three quarters of the book.  Fast paced and swapping between character viewpoints was handled well, just the right amount of cliffhanger as we left each one.  Each voice is different on the page and has something to add to the plotline of the book.  Unfortunately, it then got a little bit "silly" and Jessamine in particular acts completely out of character - for most of the book she is hardly what you would expect from an investigative journalist and suddenly she turns in to Jeremy Paxman.  The resolution of her daughter's storyline also becomes a real stretch of veracity, which doesn't help matters.

I will be entirely honest here and say I think that I may have over-starred this book and that it may not be as good as I seem to have thought it was.  You see, my judgement could be coloured as I read this in a stave-format with an online book club and the chat as we were reading definitely improved the experience of the book itself.  We debated the possible twists the book could take, why a character was acting that way and strange things like whether red or brown sauce on a sausage sandwich.  The community may well have made this book better than it really was.  Also, halfway through I realised that I have the author's first book and I really didn't enjoy that one - so much so I didn't finish it and have put it back on my TBR pile.  That has also coloured my judgement just a little but I tried to work past it and may have overcompensated.

THIS IS AN HONEST AND UNBIASED REVIEW OF A FREE COPY OF THE BOOK RECEIVED VIA THE PIGEONHOLE.