Struggled a bit with this one, as it failed at times to keep my interest. Never really felt like I got to know or care much about the characters, and the language felt young, which fit them, but was not what I was expecting. Being in my 50s I do not feel as much the young angst. Still though, one I was interested enough to read through to the end to see what happens to Mike. Would recommend, but not a super light read for summer.

Amazing read! The author wrote a story that was interesting and moved at a pace that kept me engaged. The characters were easy to invest in.

When I saw this, it appealed to me, but then I think that I thought it was something else. I’m not really sure where I stand on this one, so there may be a couple of (slight) spoilers in the review whilst I work out my thoughts….

Michael MacEwan, a mature student at St Andrews University, is out one night with friends and meets a girl called Charlie, whom he had briefly met before. They spend the night together, and then next morning he awakes to find her gone. Her body is later found on the beach, drowned. So far so good (as it were!). From this, I thought we were then going to progress onto a murder mystery type book, with Mike being accused of the murder, us learning more about Charlie’s secrets and the case being solved…. Nope. No such thing. Although the death hangs over the book, and Mike becomes more and more depressed and starts seeing weird visions, the death is not suspicious. We learn very little more about the poor girl, and whilst there are consequences later in the book, the death is not really central to the plot, I found.

The story then develops into Mike getting involved in an archaeological dig which has unearthed a centuries-old burial pit for plague victims. Great, I thought: there will be some more modern bodies found - or at least one - in the remains and then it will turn into something. Nope. No such thing. So, for me, very little happens in the book, and I really wasn’t at all sure what it was supposed to be ‘about’. It ends with some rumination on the past, and ruins, and how somehow, they are still ‘present’, but I just didn’t feel that it all tied together.

The book’s setting is very well described, and the author used the rain and cold weather as decent analogies for the emotions of the characters. Clearly the author knows St Andrews; perhaps too well, as some of the descriptions are so exact and particular (such and such was exactly sixty yards from somewhere else, and so on) that I felt a map would have been handy, even for someone like me who has been there several times. And, for me, the biggest niggle I have was the fact that it was set in 1995. Now, if an author is going to set a story in a particular period of the past there has to be a reason, something specific that impacts on the story or has relevance. I just couldn’t find it here, and the setting and references jarred (smoking in pubs, the Pulp Fiction soundtrack…). I get the sense that this probably was a time that the author himself was at St Andrews and it feels genuine enough, but it just felt dated, and the 1995 setting had no particular rationale.

I enjoyed the book well enough, but my main emotions coming away from it are: why? It wasn’t a crime novel, or a mystery, or a particular story from the past relevant to nowadays. It just seemed to stop. I guess it was about death, and the past, and living and moving on, but, hmmm…. It was pretty well written, but the premise offered so much more than I got out of it. For all that, I’ll go with 2.5 stars, being generous rounding up to a 3.

(With thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for an ARC of this book.)

I really enjoyed this book. I was gripped from the start and kept reading. The story is really well written and the characters are well described. I liked the setting and the scenery descriptions. I would recommend this book and will be looking out for more books by this author.

Thank you to Netgalley for my copy.