Eve finds a number of tapes her mother had recorded a diary of sorts on throughout her life many years after her mother had disappeared – presumed dead – an idea intriguing enough in itself and which had me very interested in reading this book.
This is just the tip of the iceberg however, as the tension amps up on listening to one in particular where Eve’s mother claims that if anyone is listening to the tape, then she has probably been murdered. I was a goner the moment those words were spoken because it left me needing to find out the details that would have led to this, particular as more comes to light and it’s revealed there was once a serial killer active in the area who was never caught, the Earring Killer.
The Tapes kept me invested in the story with the tantalizing peeks into Eve’s mother’s past and details of the serial killer as she investigates both, trying to discover if her mother’s disappearance could be related to the serial killer. Getting more details on the killings and having the tension of potentially uncovering the identity of the individual so many years later made this an unputdownable thriller that I couldn’t get enough of.
The questions grow even greater as Eve’s mother begins to become tied to the present which all worked together to have me zooming through this book and loving every page of it.
There are moments when the story cuts ahead with a time skip that jumps over something big that happens as a means of tension to end a chapter and start a new which felt at times like an odd choice and threw me off the story a bit. It just didn’t entirely make sense to me because the events end up being succinctly summarized immediately after as an occurrence in the past, and it felt like it might have been more effective just letting the events play out in real time, but it wasn’t so jarring that it ruined the book by any means. It just felt like an odd choice when all is revealed immediately anyway in a manner that kind of ruins the tension of the moment.
All together this was a very enjoyable thriller with a few slower points that were still easy to push through. I flew through this book and spent the story trying to figure out who the culprit might be/what would be revealed in the end.
