Book: Conviction
Author: Denise Mina
Pages: 352
Publisher: Vintage
Read On: Kindle
How Long It Took Me To Read: 2 days
Plot Summary: It’s just a normal morning for Anna McDonald. Gym kits, packed lunches, getting everyone up and ready. Until she opens the front door to her best friend, Estelle. Anna turns to see her own husband at the top of the stairs, suitcase in hand. They’re leaving together and they’re taking Anna’s two daughters with them.
Left alone in the big, dark house, Anna can’t think, she can’t take it in. With her safe, predictable world shattered, she distracts herself with a story: a true-crime podcast. There’s a sunken yacht in the Mediterranean, multiple murders and a hint of power and corruption. Then Anna realises she knew one of the victims in another life. She is convinced she knows what happened. Her past, so carefully hidden until now, will no longer stay silent.
This is a murder she can’t ignore, and she throws herself into investigating the case. But little does she know, her past and present lives are about to collide, sending everything she has worked so hard to achieve into freefall.
General Thoughts: This book is the Reese's Book Club pick for December and when we first saw it on Reese Witherspoon's IG we knew we wanted to read along this month. It sounded like just the thing we wanted to jump into.
My sister and I buddy read it and loved losing ourselves in this gripping tale.
Things I Liked:
1. This book is action-packed and gripping from the get-go. It starts on the day when Anna McDonald's world goes into a free fall and she is reminded of a fleeting friendship with a man (Leon Parker), who the world accuses of killing his two kids and then himself in a fancy yacht. Anna is shocked when she learns that Leon was married to Gretchen Teigler, a rich, powerful, sociopath, who'd played a starring role in destroying Anna's life. Needing to forget her own miseries, Anna decides to set off on a small journey to meet an old friend... and the book is all go, go, go from there on!
2. The story unfolds gradually- one mystery at a time. There is the mystery of Anna's past- what happened to her, how did she come across Gretchen in the first place, why was she so afraid of her? Why did she suspect Gretchen behind the murders of her husband and his two kids? I liked how we got to each of these questions gradually, all in due time.
3. The book's chapters are told from Anna's perspective and those are interspersed with the podcast on the Leon, Mark and Violetta Parker murders. So, it is almost like both mysteries gradually unfold, which was quite fun to read. Also, Anna is travelling with Fin- husband to Estelle, Anna's best friend. Estelle and Anna's husband are having an affair and they leave together with Anna's kids at the beginning of the book. So, Fin and Anna are an awkward duo, to start with, but their interactions and dynamics are quite fun- they grow on you.
4. There is a fair amount of investigation that Anna and Fin do as they try to piece together the events of the fateful day when 3 members of the Parker family drowned in their yacht. So, some of that investigation was fun to follow along.
5. The characters are written very superficially. That is by design. I don't think we are meant to shed a tear for any of them. If there are depths to them, then the author takes a light, breezy approach to that. Anna has gone through some true horrors, but Anna, the narrator, does not dwell on that at all. To dwell would be devastating. The airy it-is-all-alright tone is deliberate and I think people find it glib, but I quite enjoyed it.
Things I Didn't Like:
1. There are quite a few absurd things that happen in this book- there are clues that investigators completely miss that Fin and Anna unearth. Some of these are quite obvious for the cops to have missed! Also, one big mega villain is slightly Bond-esque and absurd, but, I found it amusing enough to not entirely hate that aspect of the book.
Rating: 4/5
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