Nothing Can Hurt You Now

I had no expectations before picking this up, as this was my first Simone Campos book, but wow, this was brutal. Nothing Can Hurt You Now tells the story of Viviana, who has been missing for almost a full day and her sister is desperately trying to find her. She must face the dark things she discovers about her sister on the way and join forces with her girlfriend if she wants to have any chance at all of finding Viviana, alive or dead.

The first half of the book reads more like a mystery and I did not always enjoy it, but the second half blew me away. I will not go into specifics as to why because I really don't want to spoil anything, but it was brutal, and such an unflinching look into the prejudice and complete apathy that women will face when they suffer a crime, not only generally as a woman, but so much more if they are poor, non-white and a prostitute.

The translation had a couple of points where I feel it was a bit awkward but not a huge problem in my opinion. Also the writing was rambling a lot in the beginning, a mix of actually looking into the mystery of the disappearance and musing about Viviana's situation, Lucy and Vivi's life story, chasing dead ends and so on. Now that I finished the book, I don't mind it so much anymore, I think it keeps the book real. But it did drag a bit.

I was between two and three stars during maybe half of the book, but as said, the second half knocked it out of the park and cemented Simone Campos for me as a fantastic thriller writer.

I really enjoyed this book it was well written with well developed characters and a gripping storyline. It was well paced, twisty and I couldn't put it down