I've read/listened to some awful books before, but I think this is the fastest and latest nosedive a book has ever taken for me. 

The murder mystery part was good. Very tense. The dumber decisions/lack of suspicion on Isla's part worked with the fact that she was in no way an investigator. The writing style was excellent. The audiobook narration was phenomenal. I was dinging it in a few places- particularly the fact that she'd apparently fallen for Alban with zero story that supported that - but I expected to end this book at about a 4 rating. But that ending. Oh my god.

After wrapping up the identity of Elodie's murderer and Stella's abuser, the remaining THREE HOURS of the audiobook were an infodump I thought would never end. The plot went from murder mystery thriller to soap opera. My suspension of disbelief shattered. At the beginning, we were told Isla got so sick she had only fuzzy memories for a few months. By the end, it's become a solid YEAR she's lost, plus the few months of recovery. And she was a student at that time, but then became an award winning photographer in the following year and a half? She never thinks about not having finished school? Or did she finish school in Australia and somehow transferring credits from Scotland never came up? Or she finished in Scotland and never thought about her diploma? She doesn't even remember applying to school in Scotland? (Surely that could have been used to explain why she wanted this job opportunity in Scotland?) The mystery baby won the genetic lottery to keep the plot going (Isla even comments that the kid looks soooooo much like Jessica!!!!)? When she was hospitalized they didn't realize she'd recently given birth? (Any decent doctor would have checked for signs of SA in a situation like that, and they would have noticed.) It felt like the author just put in stuff to keep in tension and then went 'wait I have to explain all this' and just winged it. What the hell was any of that, and could you POSSIBLY have delivered it in a more boring way. Christ.

At first, I was excited to have found a female thriller writer, as the genre tends to be seeping with sexism, but apparently Anni Taylor doesn't know how to wrap up a plot.