#SneakPeekSunday - The Devil's Claw by Lara Dearman

Title: The Devil's Claw
Author: Lara Dearman
Genre: Mystery
Published: January 9, 2018
Publisher: Trapeze
Pages: 368
Goodreads

Synopsis

Jennifer Dorey thinks she is safe.

Following a traumatic incident in London, Jennifer has returned to her childhood home in Guernsey, taking a job as a reporter at the local newspaper.

After the discovery of a drowned woman on a beach, she uncovers a pattern of similar deaths that have taken place over the past fifty years.

Together with DCI Michael Gilbert, an officer on the verge of retirement, they follow a dark trail of island myths and folklore to 'Fritz', the illegitimate son of a Nazi soldier. His work, painstakingly executed, has so far gone undetected.

But with his identity about to be uncovered, the killer now has Jennifer in his sights.

And home is the last place she should be.

Sneak Peek Review

I received a copy of this sneak peek from Trapeze through Netgalley. This is my honest review. 

This publisher is smart. They put the book blurb at the beginning of the sneak peek, so I had to read it before I got to the story, which means that I didn't go into this one blind (like I so often do). That also means that I knew going in that I was looking at a sneak peek that probably wasn't going to really intrigue me much, and I was right. I'm just not that drawn to mystery. But that being said, I still have some thoughts. 

The sneak peek got off to a really intense start, with what I assume is an attack by the killer (it wouldn't really make sense for it to be someone else though, so my assumption is probably accurate). There aren't a whole lot of details at that point though, and the writing style consists of very short, direct sentences. I didn't really like the sentence structure at that point of the sneak peek, but it didn't last long so it's not a big deal. I imagine it may be utilized at different parts of the story though, just depending on how many POVs are used to tell the story. The story is told from a few different points of view. I got four in the sneak peek alone and I imagine a few more will crop up later in the story, but I don't know for sure. It would make sense for this type of story though. 

While I wasn't particularly drawn into this sneak peek as a whole, I was intrigued by one of the points of view, and I imagine it will factor into the story more heavily than some, although it's clearly not the main POV. I just couldn't help but be intrigued by it though, because it's the POV of the illegitimate son of an actual Nazi (and I'm forever going on about how I find the WWII era fascinating). I would honestly love to read all about this guys life growing up on Guernsey, where the book is set, but I don't have much desire to continue the rest of this story as it stands. 

So will I be buying the book? Probably not. I'm a little sad I won't get to read more from that one POV, but I'm just not interested enough in the mystery of this tale to care to continue it when I have so many other books that I desperately want to read already. - Katie 

Buy the Book

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About the Author

Lara Dearman was born and raised on the beautiful Channel Island of Guernsey. She moved to the UK to study International Relations and French at the University of Sussex, after which she endured a brief career in finance before giving it up to be a stay at home mum to her three children. Having moved from Guernsey to Brighton to London to Paris to Singapore and back to London over the last fifteen years, she has now settled in Westchester, New York with her family. The Devil's Claw is her first novel and combines her love of Guernsey, myths and folklore with her obsession with crime fiction and serial killers.