Book Review #11: Fear The Worst by Linwood Barclay

 

Here is another 'mystery' book, but to be honest, I enjoyed this book much more than ''The Missing" as it had more of a definite plot and it was a lot easier to understand. As I said before, mystery books are not the kind of books that I normally read. This book was actually a recommendation from my mum. She originally bought it for me, but ended up reading it herself. She immediately loved it and practically forced me to read it, causing me to love it too.

 

The book is about Tim Blake, a divorced single-father of a teenage daughter, Sydney. Sydney is staying with her dad while she works during the summer at a hotel. However, one day when Tim goes to pick Sydney up from work, the hotel workers and manager have never heard of her. That evening, she doesn't come home. So Tim looks for her, and keeps looking, spurred on by the fact that some very dangerous people are as keen to find Sydney as he is, and Tim knows that he needs to find her first.

 

Not to sound prejudice, but I often don't read books with male protagonists, not by choice, but because the books that I read are mainly about love and romance, with mainly female main characters, and I feel that with a male lead, I can't relate. However, with this book, I can completely get into it and can sympathise with Tim. The book has an eerie feel to it, you can't predict what the next page will hold and each page is as exciting as the last.

 

What was good?

As I said, the characters are so relatable that, even though they're going through something that most people don't even dream about, you can still relate to them and are able to understand the desperation of the characters and why they do the things that they do. It's also a thriller because I was literally scared thinking about all the different possibilities that could have happened to Sydney, or whether anything actually happened to her at all, after all, she could have just ran away.

 

What was bad?

I thought that the character of Sydney's mother was slightly unrealistic. She didn't seem as upset as she should have been when she immediately heard that Sydney had not come home. For example, if I had gone missing, my parents would have acted in the exact same was that Tim did, stressing out and being over-the-top and generally parent-y, but Sydney's mother, at first, did not act as worried as most mothers would have been.

 

Overall

As you can probably tell, I completely loved the book and can't wait to read it again when I get a chance because writing this review has made me excited about it all over again and I read it so long ago that I can't actually remember how the book ended. I would advise anyone looking for something a bit different to read this book.

 

Thank you for reading.

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Comment below what your favourite genre of books are, and if you've ever read a book by Linwood Barclay before!