Karen Rose brings us Closer Than You Think, a creepy, disturbing thriller that will have readers painstakingly piecing together the many layers of this well-crafted plot.

I picked this up because I liked the sound of the blurb - a crazy stalker, a big old house with bad memories, girls going missing - and who doesn't love a good mystery every now and then? For me, Closer Than You Think was a good read, but not a great read. It had an incredibly strong start - Lots of action. Lots of stuff happening. Lots of clues. I loved the fact that right away we were in the villain's mind; witnessing every sick, twisted thing he did. And that we saw the main character, Faith, from his perspective throughout. There were definitely more than enough breadcrumbs to follow for the mystery lovers out there who really like to guess whodunnit before they're told. And I can't deny Rose is a talented lady when it comes to her plotting - this story had layers like Donkey's onion.

What I wasn't as keen on was the portion of this book from about 40% to 80% because, compared the the beginning, it felt like we'd slowed to a crawl and I don't really understand why this book needed to be 544 pages. I know you have to keep us in suspense for a bit, but it lost its rhythm, in my opinion.

To pad out the middle section, there's the romance which was just kind of "eh" for me. I didn't hate it, but at the same time it wasn't getting me any closer to the answers I wanted. Both Faith and Deacon were okay characters. The author tried to liven up Faith with the comic books and gaming, but as with a lot of these books, the tension of the situation is what determines the characters overall behaviour and they're just too damn busy running for their lives to be anything other than deadly serious.

One brilliant exception to this that comes to mind is Rachel from the Brown and de Luca series. She manages to have phenomenal page presence even while targeted by psychopaths. (Love her!).

So those would be my two major flaws - the unnecessary lengthiness and the slightly flat romance. But the mystery was very strong so, ultimately, I landed on a rather wishy washy 3 stars.

Having just sneaky peeked at the next book and seen that it is EVEN LONGER than this one at 721 pages, I'm guessing this is just the way this author rolls, and if it works for you then, like I said, she is a talented mystery writer, no doubt.

3 Stars ★★★ A copy of this book was provided by the publisher in exchange for an honest review.