A review by booksare42
Irex by Carl Rackman

mysterious tense slow-paced

3.5

Today I’m bringing you my review of Irex by Carl Rackman as part of the blog tour hosted by The Write Reads. Thank you to The Write Reads and the author for providing me with a copy of the book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

Irex is a historical mystery that had me captivated from the very beginning and I highly recommend it if you’re a fan of historical stories full of twists and turns.

Irex takes place over dual timelines. The one timeline takes place on a ship called the Irex and it is told from the perspective of Captain Will Hutton. Captain Hutton seems to be a decent man, with a strong sense of faith, who is in way over his head as a result of the passengers on his ship. The other timeline takes place after the Irex wrecks off of the coast of the Isle of Wight and it is told from the perspective of the county coroner, Frederick Blake, who is tasked with running the inquest in the events that happened. Mr. Blake is also an honest man who runs into difficulties and danger when he starts to get a bit too close to the truth about what happened aboard the ship.

I enjoyed the dual timelines in this book. I enjoyed reading about what happened on the ship with the Capitan and the crew and then seeing what Mr. Blake and his colleagues uncovered through their questioning and investigating. I found myself getting very invested in Mr. Blake’s inquest because I was desperately wanting to know if he would uncover what I just read in the previous chapter.

This book had a lot of characters, and, at times, I had a difficult time keeping track of who was who. Some of the characters in this book were quite sinister and they made this book very exciting because I wanted to know what would happen next. I enjoyed the characters working on the inquest more than I enjoyed the characters on the Irex, and my two favourite characters were Mr. Blake and Mr. Rennie, who was a reporter assisting with the inquest goes.

As far as the story goes, I enjoyed it. I thought the mystery was enjoyable and there were a lot of twists and turn that made it difficult to put the book down. I’m not very familiar with the time period this book takes place in, so there were some things I had to look up because I was curious, but I was still able to enjoy the story without being familiar with the history. I also found it neat that the Irex was a real ship that wrecked near the Isle of Wight.

As far as the writing goes, this book was very easy to get drawn into. The story was easy to read, which made it easy to get hooked on the story.