carolesrandomlife

This review can also be found at Carole's Random Life in Books.

I enjoyed this book! I have always wanted to try Jonathan Kellerman's work so I decided to give this book a try. Unfortunately, life got a little busy when I had originally planned to read this book and my review is about two and a half years late. I really wish that I had read this book when I first got my hands on it because it was really good. 

This really is Grace's story. Grace was a wonderful character and incredibly complex. She had a less than ideal childhood but as adult, she is a highly respected psychologist. I loved the fact that we get to know Grace both as a child and as an adult. I thought the contrast between the two periods was really well done. I wouldn't really say that I ever liked Grace but I really did enjoy trying to figure her out and was very curious about her past.

Grace does have a bit of a secret life and that life intersects with her professional life early in this book. As she tries to figure out what really happened, she finds that things may be connected to her past. I thought that the mystery side of this book was really just okay. It was rather complex and I never had everything quite figured out but it wasn't the most enjoyable part of the book for me.

I thought that the first parts of the book were the strongest. I really enjoyed all of the book that focused on Grace as a child. Adult Grace was really more interesting to me during the first part of the book as well. The book continued to bounce back and forth from past to present but as the story progressed the two timelines grew much closer to each other. As the focus of the book moved towards bringing the mystery to a conclusion, it seemed to fizzle out just a bit. 

I would recommend this book to others. I really enjoyed the writing style and found this to be the kind of book that was easy to keep reading. I do hope to read from this author in the future.

I received a digital review copy of this book from Random House Publishing Group - Ballantine via NetGalley.

Initial Thoughts
I enjoyed this book and am kind of mad at myself for leaving it unread for as long as I did. The book did lose some momentum for me during the last third of the book. I really liked learning about Grace both in current life and in the past. The contrast between Grace as a child and as a mature adult was very well done and eye opening. The book did seem to focus more on the mystery aspect as it moved towards the finale which was somewhat less interesting for me. This was my first time reading Jonathan Kellerman and I really enjoyed his writing style.