Conviction

Book-club read [UoG]: definitely wouldn't have picked this one up off my own back. The cover is the epitome of a “holiday” book, the ones offered in a train station or airport, all bright colours and beaches and promises of exciting and mysterious travels. I much prefer darker, gothic covers: skulls, ravens, skeletons and dying blooms. This one also had a “Reece's book club” sticker on the front which would usually have me running in the opposite direction - I'm not a fan of celebrity endorsement.
But I was pleasantly surprised, the writing was engaging. The protagonist was interesting, and flawed - I like flawed! Mina didn't shy away from violence and darkness. I didn't expect the twist (it was so subtly done I actually had to re-read the last few pages just to set it straight in my head).
The only thing I didn't like was the large sections of italics, I find them quite difficult to read. I understand that they were there to differentiate between the podcast and the rest of the book but I feel this could have been done in a different way. Perhaps a different font, “inverted commas”, - prefacing each paragraph with a hyphen. Anyway, it's done now so it doesn't really matter. I may even read the next one, so long as it's not full of italics too!