Dear Amy by Helen Callaghan

Here's another beauty!

Dear Amy is another book I've had chance to read while I've been mending! I was looking forward to reviewing this as I feel it lends to both sides of a review. I'd heard a lot of good media about this debut psychological thriller, and wanted to see what the fuss was all about.

From the start this book grabbed me, the blurb really jumped out to me...

From the back...

"Margot Lewis is the agony aunt for the Cambridge examiner. Her advice column, 'Dear Amy' gets all kinds of letters - but none like the one she's just received.

"Dear Amy

I don't know where I am. I've been kidnapped and am being held prisoner by a strange man. I'm afraid he'll kill me.

Please help me soon,

Bethan Avery

Bethan Avery has been missing for years. This is surely some cruel hoax. But, as more letters arrive, they contain information that was never made public. How is this happening? Answering this question will cost Margot everything . ."

So, as you can imagine, I could not wait to get into this story! And to begin with, it didn't disappoint. I absolutely loved the first few chapters. Callaghan didn't take any time to get straight to the point with the story line, and continued at that same pace, getting ever more and more intriguing. I love the fact that the story is written in 1st person, as told by Margot, and the novel flips between 1st and 3rd, between Margot and a girl being held captive somewhere. Character development was pretty good, I quite liked Margot as the main protagonist, but did find her in some places to be quite flippant. As you know, I love it when I can hate a character, and there were quite a few, and I found myself hating some quite early on. There was even someone to fall in love with for good measure! 

HOWEVER!

About a third of the way through the momentum stopped, and the book  began to drag, I really felt like I was trudging through waist deep, thick mud. The story suddenly went from fast pace, full blown thriller, to a "will they, won't they, get together" read. This really annoyed me. I'm all for a story housing many different themes, but if you're going to that, I think its important to make sure the genres flow. I really wanted to enjoy all this book, and found myself for around 100 pages just wishing Callaghan would get on with the story. 

I also hate to say, that the 'twist' was very transparent, it was during this part of the book that I guessed most of the plot twist, and much as I don't like overly complicated plots, I hate it when I guess it 1/3 of the way in!

Changing tack again though, once I was past this part, the plot line did pick up again, but nothing near the pace it began with, and I found that during that last 70ish pages, I just wanted the story to finish so I could know the outcome. 

I did enjoy reading this book, and I'm quite sure some of you will hands down disagree with me, but I wouldn't be in a hurry to ever re-read this book, and I would think twice about picking up Callaghan's next book, which is truly a disappointment to me. I hate it when I don't, head over heels, love a book, and, I'm in no way saying not to read it, you might read it and love it, I think I just felt cheated out of what could have been one of this years fantastic thrillers.

Let me know what you think!

I'll Keep you posted

C