*spoiler-free*
The Crooked Shore is the 8th book in the Lake District Cold-Case Mysteries series but fortunately can be read as a stand-alone book. This series of crime books feature Hannah Scarlett and historian Daniel Kind and the dramas surrounding the Lake District. In The Crooked Shore, DCI Hannah Scarlett struggles as her Cold Case team begin to lose manpower, but PCC Kit Gleadall helps to revitalise the group as Ramona Smith’s disappearance from over 20 years ago resurfaces. This makes it the perfect time for Hannah to shine to bring justice to an old case and race against the clock to save more innocent lives. Only one question is left remaining, who killed Ramona Smith?
We are introduced to the complex case of Ramona’s disappearance, where the prime suspect was charged but not found guilty. The case came back into the public eye as the result of a shocking tragedy on the Crooked Shore. What I loved about this book was how everything linked together. The Crooked Shore is split into alternating perspectives, making it flow at a steady pace. The book is quite dialogue-heavy which I enjoyed as it was very easy to keep turning the page to find out more. As well as this, the chapters are relatively short which helped me read more of the book in one sitting.
The Crooked Shore is addictive to read as you don’t know who to trust as some of the characters are unreliable narrators. There are a lot of plot twists and interesting events that intertwine different characters together. As more and more secrets are revealed throughout the book, the plot grows stronger.
My favourite characters throughout were Tory, Logan, and Kingsley as they are well developed and from the offset, I was excited to see where their stories would go. These characters had a lot of deceit and ambiguity surrounding them, making them all the more intriguing. However, as The Crooked Shore is the 8th instalment in the series, sometimes I felt I was missing some context that would have been covered in the previous books. For example, Hannah and Daniel’s relationship was sometimes a little difficult to place as the book alluded to previous issues that were not given much substance in this book. Yet, I don’t feel that this took away from the main plot.
The Crooked Shore is a classic whodunnit story and is written incredibly well by Edwards. The characters are interesting and fit well within the thrilling plot and overall, I really enjoyed reading this book. I’m excited to check out some more books in Edwards’ series and get to know even more about the main characters.
A huge thank you to Allison & Busby for letting me review this book on NetGalley! If you want to check out some other reviews on this book, below are some people posting reviews in the coming days.
3/5 stars
Soph's Library 
Leave a comment