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A review by sethwaylin
The Fields by Erin Young
4.0
3.5/5 rounded up
I have two degrees in forensic science. I do not enjoy procedural crime thrillers with cop/detective main characters AT ALL. Usually, they are all the same flavor: buttered bread that thinks it's a gourmet loaf. However, this one I made an exception for, because I was really into the idea of having some midwestern gothic vibes in my hands, and I'm glad I did because I actually didn't hate this particular cop/detective main character. I think what I really like about Riley as opposed to other characters in the same occupation within this genre (which I've read a lot of) is that she doesn't have this inflated sense of ability or knowledge - she's really just doing her best and not being self-aggrandizing about it. As a reader, I appreciate that, because I can come to my own conclusions about who she is rather than being told by the main character how great they are at their job.
The way this panned out really gave me "The Killing" vibes (the television series, though I'd love to read the source material at some point) with all of the political ties to the crimes in this novel. If you're scrolling through reviews and you liked "The Killing," you'd probably like this. My main gripe with this novel, however, was how speechy most of the dialogue about the ties between agriculture and politics was. It just didn't read in a natural way - it read more like an essay each time it was brought up, and you could kind of tell they were the points in the outline where there was probably a note saying "remember to hit on this so it continues to be a thought in the readers' heads." Those points took me out of the reading experience purely because they weren't executed in what felt like a natural way, and they were usually quite long monologues. I'm not saying those moments should have been cut. Some restructuring probably would have fixed it.
I've also seen a lot of reviewers call this book just nothing more than a dump of graphic violence. It could be my background, but I just don't really agree with that. I mean, it's a crime thriller. For the genre, the detail that was given was what I'd expect from it. Is it very detailed? Yes. Did it feel like that was the whole book? Not to me, no. There was plenty more substance in the book apart from those scenes. Also, the author did do very thorough research on the forensics details at those crime scenes. Having studied it, could I tell she had very deep Google searches that she slapped onto the page? Yes. If I hadn't, would I have been able to tell? Probably not. Did I cringe each time the main character(s) walked onto a crime scene with ONLY the foot coverings? Also yes. Does that really matter? Also probably not. Should I stop answering my own questions? Definitely.
If you're hankering for some midwestern crime times and something procedural, it's a good read and gets the job done. There is a bit of head-hopping, so if you don't like that, it's definitely present here, and again, the depictions of the crime scenes are pretty graphic, so it really just depends on preference. I do wish we got some more emotion or connection to Chloe especially (the first victim), since Riley knew her when she was younger, but I also understand this is meant to be the debut of a series and that there is the potential for some more of that to come out in the aftermath of the contents of this first book.
I have two degrees in forensic science. I do not enjoy procedural crime thrillers with cop/detective main characters AT ALL. Usually, they are all the same flavor: buttered bread that thinks it's a gourmet loaf. However, this one I made an exception for, because I was really into the idea of having some midwestern gothic vibes in my hands, and I'm glad I did because I actually didn't hate this particular cop/detective main character. I think what I really like about Riley as opposed to other characters in the same occupation within this genre (which I've read a lot of) is that she doesn't have this inflated sense of ability or knowledge - she's really just doing her best and not being self-aggrandizing about it. As a reader, I appreciate that, because I can come to my own conclusions about who she is rather than being told by the main character how great they are at their job.
The way this panned out really gave me "The Killing" vibes (the television series, though I'd love to read the source material at some point) with all of the political ties to the crimes in this novel. If you're scrolling through reviews and you liked "The Killing," you'd probably like this. My main gripe with this novel, however, was how speechy most of the dialogue about the ties between agriculture and politics was. It just didn't read in a natural way - it read more like an essay each time it was brought up, and you could kind of tell they were the points in the outline where there was probably a note saying "remember to hit on this so it continues to be a thought in the readers' heads." Those points took me out of the reading experience purely because they weren't executed in what felt like a natural way, and they were usually quite long monologues. I'm not saying those moments should have been cut. Some restructuring probably would have fixed it.
I've also seen a lot of reviewers call this book just nothing more than a dump of graphic violence. It could be my background, but I just don't really agree with that. I mean, it's a crime thriller. For the genre, the detail that was given was what I'd expect from it. Is it very detailed? Yes. Did it feel like that was the whole book? Not to me, no. There was plenty more substance in the book apart from those scenes. Also, the author did do very thorough research on the forensics details at those crime scenes. Having studied it, could I tell she had very deep Google searches that she slapped onto the page? Yes. If I hadn't, would I have been able to tell? Probably not. Did I cringe each time the main character(s) walked onto a crime scene with ONLY the foot coverings? Also yes. Does that really matter? Also probably not. Should I stop answering my own questions? Definitely.
If you're hankering for some midwestern crime times and something procedural, it's a good read and gets the job done. There is a bit of head-hopping, so if you don't like that, it's definitely present here, and again, the depictions of the crime scenes are pretty graphic, so it really just depends on preference. I do wish we got some more emotion or connection to Chloe especially (the first victim), since Riley knew her when she was younger, but I also understand this is meant to be the debut of a series and that there is the potential for some more of that to come out in the aftermath of the contents of this first book.