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3.66 AVERAGE
3.66 AVERAGE
kimbofo's review
3.0
Second Sight, by Australian author Aoife Clifford, is a well-plotted crime thriller set in a small coastal town.
It focuses on two separate, possibly linked, crimes: the disappearance of a teenage girl more than 20 years earlier and the death of an Irish tourist punched by a local man who was once friends with the missing teen. It is structured around two intertwined narratives — one set in the present day told in the first person, the other set in the past (New Year’s Eve, 1996, to be precise) told in the third person.
To read my review in full, please visit my blog.
It focuses on two separate, possibly linked, crimes: the disappearance of a teenage girl more than 20 years earlier and the death of an Irish tourist punched by a local man who was once friends with the missing teen. It is structured around two intertwined narratives — one set in the present day told in the first person, the other set in the past (New Year’s Eve, 1996, to be precise) told in the third person.
To read my review in full, please visit my blog.
yvetteadams's review against another edition
4.0
Aussie thriller set in a little country town. Growing up in a country town I could relate to some of this. It stays a part of you.
kchisholm's review against another edition
5.0
When Eliza Carmody returns to the small seaside town she grew up in, some things have changed, and a lot hasn't. Often the way when you return to the small town of your youth. Carmody's changed a bit though, and this daughter of the local cop, now lawyer, is there as the legal representative of a large corporation, defending a bushfire class action bought by residents of Kinsale, after it was nearly wiped out in a massive bushfire.
On the way into town to meet up with an expert witness a road rage incident unfolds in front of her, rapidly spiralling into deadly assault, made even more shocking because the perpetrator turns out to be her childhood friend, Luke Tyrell. The victim is an Irish traveller, and the attack is shockingly quick, extremely violent, and cannot be excused by the trauma the bushfire had caused Tyrell. Right from this opening rush of action, Carmody is troubled. Representing the corporation being sued is enough to put her offside with the town, her own experiences growing up there had been difficult, and her family fractured enough already, to have her hypersensitive about perceptions on both sides.
That hypersensitivity in Clifford's hands translates elegantly into foreboding. As the narrative winds its way back through Carmody's childhood, and the present, the after-affects of the fire, and assault, right up until the discovery of an old skeleton, buried near the historic homestead, The Castle, Carmody is slightly out of kilter. She's dealing with changing life circumstances as her desire for career and success falters; and her best friend is happy, pregnant and content to remain in their home town, working as the local doctor. The sister she has a very fraught relationship with is also back, her brother-in-law now the local cop, and her father unresponsive after a car accident.
Back when she was a teenager, the night of a big party near The Castle, the night that some friendships were strained between a group of teenagers, whilst other relationships were strengthened, somebody disappeared. Nobody ever knew what had happened, now Carmody feels like she never did enough to find out why.
It's an interesting juxtaposition - the single-minded determined career woman, ambitious and focused; versus the young teenager, struggling with a tricky relationship with her father and sister, missing her dead mother desperately, confused and scattered enough to accept that one of her best friends can simply disappear into the night. The adult woman wondering what the teenage girl was thinking, slowly explaining it as her father and sister's recollections are revealed, and people all over town start to open up about what they know.
Clifford is working with a heap of themes here - small towns, inter-family tensions, buried secrets, things that a community collectively wants to forget, things that fester and grow and eat away. Upheaval is often what cracks some of these lightly held threads together, and a bushfire of the magnitude of the one that hit Kinsale is the perfect catalyst. It's shaken the foundations of the town, it's dragged somebody back into their orbit that's desperate enough to get to the bottom of past events that she's prepared to rock those foundations further, and she's a perfect character to do that. An insider who is also an outsider, fragile and crazy brave into the bargain.
https://www.austcrimefiction.org/review/second-sight-aoife-clifford
On the way into town to meet up with an expert witness a road rage incident unfolds in front of her, rapidly spiralling into deadly assault, made even more shocking because the perpetrator turns out to be her childhood friend, Luke Tyrell. The victim is an Irish traveller, and the attack is shockingly quick, extremely violent, and cannot be excused by the trauma the bushfire had caused Tyrell. Right from this opening rush of action, Carmody is troubled. Representing the corporation being sued is enough to put her offside with the town, her own experiences growing up there had been difficult, and her family fractured enough already, to have her hypersensitive about perceptions on both sides.
That hypersensitivity in Clifford's hands translates elegantly into foreboding. As the narrative winds its way back through Carmody's childhood, and the present, the after-affects of the fire, and assault, right up until the discovery of an old skeleton, buried near the historic homestead, The Castle, Carmody is slightly out of kilter. She's dealing with changing life circumstances as her desire for career and success falters; and her best friend is happy, pregnant and content to remain in their home town, working as the local doctor. The sister she has a very fraught relationship with is also back, her brother-in-law now the local cop, and her father unresponsive after a car accident.
Back when she was a teenager, the night of a big party near The Castle, the night that some friendships were strained between a group of teenagers, whilst other relationships were strengthened, somebody disappeared. Nobody ever knew what had happened, now Carmody feels like she never did enough to find out why.
It's an interesting juxtaposition - the single-minded determined career woman, ambitious and focused; versus the young teenager, struggling with a tricky relationship with her father and sister, missing her dead mother desperately, confused and scattered enough to accept that one of her best friends can simply disappear into the night. The adult woman wondering what the teenage girl was thinking, slowly explaining it as her father and sister's recollections are revealed, and people all over town start to open up about what they know.
Clifford is working with a heap of themes here - small towns, inter-family tensions, buried secrets, things that a community collectively wants to forget, things that fester and grow and eat away. Upheaval is often what cracks some of these lightly held threads together, and a bushfire of the magnitude of the one that hit Kinsale is the perfect catalyst. It's shaken the foundations of the town, it's dragged somebody back into their orbit that's desperate enough to get to the bottom of past events that she's prepared to rock those foundations further, and she's a perfect character to do that. An insider who is also an outsider, fragile and crazy brave into the bargain.
https://www.austcrimefiction.org/review/second-sight-aoife-clifford
honeybeejoyous's review against another edition
3.0
I first pulled [b:Second Sight|41817435|Second Sight|Aoife Clifford|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1551604850l/41817435._SY75_.jpg|61417792] off the “crime” shelf in my local secondhand bookstore because the cover caught my eye. Reading the summary, I was even more intrigued. This book is about Eliza Carmody, a woman who returns to the small town where she grew up for a work assignment, but ends up being the primary witness in a police case. As things get more complicated, Eliza finds herself revisiting the mystery of her best friend’s disappearance years ago and it starts to seem like everything is more complicated than she previously thought.
[b:Second Sight|41817435|Second Sight|Aoife Clifford|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1551604850l/41817435._SY75_.jpg|61417792] called to mind a few other books I’ve read this year. It reminded me of [b:Sharp Objects|18045891|Sharp Objects|Gillian Flynn|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1475695315l/18045891._SY75_.jpg|3801] in that it’s the story of a woman who returns to her small town on the biggest assignment of her career, only to become involved in a mystery she wasn’t expecting, one that seems to run deep in the town’s veins and even involve her own family members. The novel reminded me of [b:All the Missing Girls|23212667|All the Missing Girls|Megan Miranda|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1452098621l/23212667._SY75_.jpg|42755300] in that it’s the story of a woman returning to her small town and reliving (and investigating her role in) the tragic events from a summer from her youth. [b:Second Sight|41817435|Second Sight|Aoife Clifford|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1551604850l/41817435._SY75_.jpg|61417792] is a bit of a slow burn and the pieces to the puzzle take a long time to fall into place, but the last quarter of the book is quite page-turning. [a:Aoife Clifford|14677688|Aoife Clifford|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1447649118p2/14677688.jpg]’s novel is the classic story of how nobody is who they seem in a small town and the events that happen in your childhood are often far more complicated than they seem. It was a good story and I found the mystery itself to be intriguing and satisfying, even if the story format is a bit overdone.
Note: This book is set in Australia, which most people could probably figure out. My brain is used to “small town” = American south so it took me longer than it should have. I was confused about why people were going to the beach on New Year’s Eve, but it became clear when they started talking about kangaroos. If you’re also geographically challenged, know it’s not just you!
Trigger warning for a description of rape in this book.
[b:Second Sight|41817435|Second Sight|Aoife Clifford|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1551604850l/41817435._SY75_.jpg|61417792] called to mind a few other books I’ve read this year. It reminded me of [b:Sharp Objects|18045891|Sharp Objects|Gillian Flynn|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1475695315l/18045891._SY75_.jpg|3801] in that it’s the story of a woman who returns to her small town on the biggest assignment of her career, only to become involved in a mystery she wasn’t expecting, one that seems to run deep in the town’s veins and even involve her own family members. The novel reminded me of [b:All the Missing Girls|23212667|All the Missing Girls|Megan Miranda|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1452098621l/23212667._SY75_.jpg|42755300] in that it’s the story of a woman returning to her small town and reliving (and investigating her role in) the tragic events from a summer from her youth. [b:Second Sight|41817435|Second Sight|Aoife Clifford|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1551604850l/41817435._SY75_.jpg|61417792] is a bit of a slow burn and the pieces to the puzzle take a long time to fall into place, but the last quarter of the book is quite page-turning. [a:Aoife Clifford|14677688|Aoife Clifford|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1447649118p2/14677688.jpg]’s novel is the classic story of how nobody is who they seem in a small town and the events that happen in your childhood are often far more complicated than they seem. It was a good story and I found the mystery itself to be intriguing and satisfying, even if the story format is a bit overdone.
Note: This book is set in Australia, which most people could probably figure out. My brain is used to “small town” = American south so it took me longer than it should have. I was confused about why people were going to the beach on New Year’s Eve, but it became clear when they started talking about kangaroos. If you’re also geographically challenged, know it’s not just you!
Trigger warning for a description of rape in this book.
chilliwitch's review against another edition
4.0
I enjoyed this a lot - I also always enjoy a good twist that I didn't see coming :)
rosiereads27's review against another edition
4.0
I liked this book and the writing. My only complaint is about the two utterly gratuitous sex scenes. That's me, though, I am sure others would not complain about it. Otherwise, I enjoyed the story and the artful use of flashback chapters. This gave the reader a better sense of the back story instead of having the protagonist reminiscing. Also, each flashback chapter was about the same night, but written from the perspective of each character, so you didn't feel like the exact story was being told repeatedly.
rubyeml's review against another edition
5.0
Excellent second book by Aoife Clifford. I couldn't put it down! I thought the characters were really realistic and well developed, it delved into some interesting issues and was definitely a page-turner. Would definitely recommend.
vkjarrett's review against another edition
challenging
dark
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
Took me a while to get into it and I almost put it down but I stuck with it and after the second half it got really good and consuming, I wanted to know what happened next and it was hard to put down. Lots of little things that all linked up.
jaydeewers's review against another edition
adventurous
emotional
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Complicated
3.5