Book Review | The Girl In the Red Coat

Eight year old Carmel has always been different - sensitive, distracted, with an heart-stopping tendency to go missing. Her moth Beth, newly single, worries about her daughters strangeness, especially as she is trying to rebuild a life for the two of them on her own.

When she takes Carmel for an outing to a local festival, her worst fear is realised: Carmel disappears into the crowd. Unable to accept the possibility that her daughter might be gone for good, Beth embarks on a mission to find her. Meanwhile, Carmel begins an extraordinary and terrifying journey of her own. But do the real clues to Carmel's disappearance lie in the otherworldly qualities her mother had only begun to guess at? 

I really did not enjoy this book. At all. I only read The Girl in the Red Coat in its entirety because I started a couple of days before I went on holiday and thought I'd persevere knowing it wouldn't come on holiday with me. Then I returned from holiday having not returned it to the library so I thought I'd give it a further try and it was only stubbornness and that post holiday lull that kept me turning pages. And it was very much turning pages I did end up skim reading a lot of it as I just found it so boring.

When I first saw this book turning up in my Amazon recommendations it was the cover that appealed, thinking it was along the lines of The Girl on the Train. When I read further I didn't think that the 'parental' aspect of the story would appeal. Marketing done well it's regular appearance meant I eventually placed an order with the library and into my hands it came.

Whilst I may not be a parent I've still had the panic when one of my niece and nephews disappears from sight even momentarily and it gave a somewhat intriguing storyline that made me think there was plenty to keep turning the page.

I will of course write without any spoilers to the best of my abilities but it's often hard to write a negative review without being a little detailed. My main problem is I felt the story was boring and the strands of the story were never fully explored nor explained. Everything felt implied, simply touched on and then moved over. It also felt repetitive in some details, whilst, and now I'm repeating myself, going into the full details of the story.

The story is told with two voices, mother and daughter although the daughter for an 8 year old, no matter how weird seemed far too mature to relate, even if she was 'strange'. How she came to be abducted is never explained, some characters just simply disappeared, nor explanation of why they were there in the first place. Of course I've mentioned skim reading the book so perhaps I missed vital lines but I don't believe so, I just think they were missing.

Of course the reward for finishing this book would be at best a satisfactory ending. Sadly there was not. It felt rushed, after the drawn out middle of the book then ending appeared to just do that, end. I was sitting there thinking is that it. For the chid abduction element of the story I would hope to feel something more emotive.

I would love to know if you have read this book, it is indeed a best seller and highly spoke of so perhaps its just not to my style. It's clearly not to my liking.