I purchased this book on a whim. The premise seemed interesting—a librarian was framed for a crime she hadn’t committed and then bid her time to get the vengeance she wanted. It stayed in my Kindle library for a long while (as a lot of purchased books do), when I stumbled upon it yet again and this time the word “rogue cops” caught me—it was so relevant in the current scenario when our faith in police system was wavering. The idea of such rogue cops getting the right justice in an alternate fictional universe seemed satisfying.
And so, I got to reading it.
It brought out all the delights of a typical good thriller. The story was engrossing, I found myself turning pages to keep up with the fast-paced plot and sitting on the edge as I navigated through the plot twists. The strong female protagonist was fairly well etched, her normal background made her easily relatable; I felt the frustration of Sarah as the tide turned against her, and almost tasted victory as she tried to get back her life on track. The journey she goes through is exhilarating and as a reader it is quite an experience to live through that.
The story was neatly tied together, with most secondary characters having back stories to supplement how they landed up to be the people that they were; their motives and intentions making them credible. The police system also seemed to be decently researched and plausible. The build up to the plot is good and short, there are enough instances placed for the reader to start loathing the villains even before their encounter with Sarah. There was the right amount of romance in the story, not overly done that it deviated from the main plot but not just present in conversations with others.
There were two things which I did not like much in the book. One, Sarah’s transformation, something which I was looking forward to, was almost sudden. Till a moment, she had almost resigned to fate and then the next second, she was a different person. The reasons for her transformation were justified, there was enough wrong done to her for her to be so furious and lose her normal morality compass, however, the process of how she got there was missing.
Second, was the stereotyping of her being a “librarian”. While I understood the job specification was to help bolster the fact that the girl had a commonplace life, and abided by the rules. But then it was abused in the entire series, to the point of stereotyping the job itself. It was as if everything inexplicable that Sarah did was almost tied to the fact that she was a “librarian”; the villains in the books mentioning it way too often.
Overall, it was a good one time read, and I enjoyed this more than I expected to. There were parts that were not very realistic, but since it is fiction, in my opinion it can be easily overlooked. The writing of the author was decent, so I wouldn’t mind trying other books of his.
(P.S. I’d have actually rated the book 3.5)