Sara-Jayne Townsend is a published crime and horror writer and likes books in which someone dies horribly. She is founder and Chair Person of the T Party Writers’ Group. http://sarajaynetownsend.weebly.com/
Georgia Sage works as a courtroom artist and believes she has the gift of being able to see evil in people. She uses her artistic talents to try and get that evil onto the page, when she is drawing portraits of defendants she believes are guilty.
But it appears that Georgia is hiding secrets of her own, having changed her identity to escape a traumatic past. Then there is the fact she has started seeing people that she knows can’t possibly be there. People who in some cases she knows are dead.
When Georgia is obliged to revisit an old case, she does some investigations of her own as she fears that her own emotional state at that time, condemned an innocent party, allowing the real culprit to evade justice.
The premise behind this book is an intriguing one, and one that kept me reading, to uncover the enigma behind Georgia, and her tragic history. I empathised strongly with the character, as it became clear fairly early on that she’s carrying around some dark psychological baggage.
This book is part-mystery, part-psychological thriller that had me turning pages rapidly, wanting to see what happened next. The plot converges into a satisfactory and neatly tied-up ending, however the climax was not as explosive as I was expecting. There’s a lot of hype from publishers these days about devastating twists you’ll never see coming, and I think sometimes that raises a readers expectations a little too high.
Nevertheless, this is a tightly-plotted novel that will keep you turning the pages, with a main character you’ll grow to care about.
Definitely worth your time.
