Skeletal (Christchurch Crime #2) by Katherine Hayton
Add to Goodreads
Paranormal, Crime, Thriller
Three months before she died Daina Harrow faced a bully at school. Six weeks before she died Daina Harrow suffered an assault in the park. One week before she died Daina Harrow stole a secret people had killed to hide. That was ten years ago. Ten long years. Now, her bones have been found on a building site. A coroner's inquest has been reopened. A parade of witnesses is about to start.
And Daina's here. Watching every day as her mother cries in the courtroom. Watching every day as her friends, and her enemies, and her killers lie about her on the stand.
Watching, and making sure that no matter what the coroner hears, you know the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. So help you God.
4 out of 5 (very good)
Independent Reviewer for Archaeolibrarian - I Dig Good Books!
When first asked to read a book for review, I jump onto Amazon and/or Goodreads to read the blurb and maybe a few reviews, just to get a gist of what I'm reading. I couldn't find any reviews at that time, so was a little in the dark. This is Daina's story, told from her POV in the present time, and told from other POV's in the past time. I liked the flipping about here, from past to present (but more later) it felt right for this book. Daina has been missing for ten years, when her body is discovered and we sit through the final months of her life and the inquest into her death. I'm not gonna give the game away as to who dunnit, but the ending sort of crept up on me, it surprised me, and I didn't see it coming. HERE thats not a good thing, becasue I felt the ending was rushed. I also got a bit confused with the flipping about towards the end, because it went for 2014 to 2004 and 1994, and then back again, and then off it went again. I got a littel dizzy. AND I really didn't get the point of The Grey Man in the story. At All. BUT BUT BUT despite my dizzyness, my confusion and The Grey Man, I enjoyed this book. It was different. A solid 4 star read.
**same worded review will appear elsewhere**
* A copy of this book was provided to me with no requirements for a review. I voluntarily read this book, and the comments here are my honest opinion. *
Katherine Hayton is a middle-aged woman who works in insurance, doesn't have children or pets, can't drive, has lived in Christchurch her entire life, and resides a two-minute walk from where she was born. For some reason, she's developed a rich fantasy life. To confuse readers, Katherine also publishes under the pen name Lee Hayton (a USA Today bestselling author.) The horror of the world knowing her middle name is outweighed by the convenience of fitting the shorter nom de plume onto book covers. Something she now wishes she'd discovered and implemented far sooner. Katherine's latest novel is Pushing Up Daisies, the first in a new Cozy Mystery series featuring an amateur sleuth in her fifties who reluctantly solves murders with the help of her best friends, one a bookworm and the other a conspiracy theorist. She has also recently released a new book in her Sweet Baked Mystery series - Raspberries and Retaliation - which is set in the gorgeous township of Hanmer Springs. She spends far too much time hanging about on Twitter @kathay1973 if you want to connect, and is now tired of referring to herself in the third person so is signing off.