56 Days

56 Days by Catherine Ryan Howard is a great Irish crime novel exploring the past and identity. This book is ultra-contemporary and is set during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. Some readers will not want to read this book for that reason. If that's you, scroll on. Personally I find value in using art and literature to reflect on and process reality, and I'm glad to see this difficult time recorded in a novel. Apart from the setting during the lockdown, the book was full of twists and surprises and kept me invested in the characters the whole time. I liked the two main characters and wanted to know what was going to happen next. The book's use of moving between different times felt exciting and interesting. That said, there were a couple of reasons why this was not a 5 star read for me. First: the book is told from several different points of view. At one point new information was introduced that changed what we knew about some of the characters and their motivation. For me, this was confusing because we had already read that scene narrated from that character's point of view. Imagine being inside someone's head and then discovering their perception of events wasn't how they experienced it. It just seemed a bit jarring. Second: there were a couple of Garda, and they were great characters, but their plot line just kind of ended. I didn't get a great sense of closure and I almost wondered why these characters played as much of a role in the book as they did. Apart from these criticisms I enjoyed this book. I highly recommend the audiobook, read by Alana Kerr Collins. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️