It took me a long time to write this review, as I wasn't sure how I felt.

This is the first Nicci French book I haven't given 5 stars to, which truly pains me. I think the main issue is that it is quite an early work of theirs, so they haven't got into the swing of it yet. 

One of the first things I noticed was that the timing was really strange at the start. I know that it is meant to be minute by minute play of Nina's day, but at the beginning it was like she was fitting the content of a feature length film into a 20 minute TV episode. In about 13 minutes she essentially cleaned her entire house and then some. It felt pretty unrealistic. Which is sad, because I haven't read many books that follow someone every second of their day, and wanted to enjoy the premise more. This pacing did definitely get better throughout the book though.

I enjoyed that there were no chapters and it was just a full stream of conscious. I also thought that Nina's actions were completely believable if you had lost a child - the desperation was so realistic. Yes, I did think she was being an idiot at times, but that's REAL LIFE, book characters aren't meant to be perfect. 

I thought the point where Nina just summed up everything up at the end felt very contrived, and HOW could she come up with all of that with the state she was in?? I know police can be a bit shit sometimes, but can 'civilians' really be that good? 

The 'big reveal' was so basic that I was expecting a twist ending where we find out Nina is completely wrong, or that there were multiple people involved, but no.

I did enjoy this overall, and found the second half especially gripping, but I've recently found myself capable of being more critical of books, and I don't think this could be above a 2.5