A review by bexcain
Where Sleeping Girls Lie by Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé

dark mysterious medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.0

After loving ace of spades I was highly anticipating the follow up release and the second published work by this author.

Unfortunately, this read just wasn’t on par with the previous one. The author highlighted in the intro how hard it is to write a second book and I can just imagine, especially, when your debut was so highly regarded.

I think for me I just wasn’t invested enough in the plot or characters, the main mystery happens quite early on and I didn’t feel the peak of intrigue as to what happened when it initially occurred and it never really built throughout the book either. We start to unravel what happened quite late on in the book and that just led to a dragging feeling in the middle. I wasn’t crazy on the reveal as to what had actually been happening either.

This book deals with some pretty heavy topics and I think it handles them with care, very much reflecting on how institutions and media have historically made so many errors and bringing those to light through the lense of the victims and people impacted. 

I thought the theme of friendship was really strong and found myself enjoying the scenes where the group were together the most. ‘What a sad little life, Jane’ always a favourite quote of mine and love pop culture references in my books.

Overall this was middle of the road for me but I’d still 100% read other releases from this author.