Everything you do is wrong starts with a storm and a mystery. Harmony’s Auntie Mel finds the girl by the beach. They all think she has drowned.
I read this book several weeks ago and didn’t write it up immediately. This isn’t because the plot lines aren’t tight. It read like a TV crime drama. The young, handsome policeman – not quite a detective in his own right – families broken behind closed doors, teenagers lying to the police for a little bit of attention, the exploration of stereotypes about different communities (here the travelling community).
It is a fun and page-turning read. But, and for me this is a big but, it ends with a sense of deflation. I didn’t feel provoked to continue thinking about the characters and their lives, or to ponder afresh my understanding of the world and how people move within it.
Perhaps I was asking too much of this novel that for the right reader would do all of those things. The characters are believable and their lives the heady mixture of mundane and awkward that feels so true to real life. It just didn’t do it for me.
What begins as crime moves into an elaborate drama in which everyone does the wrong thing, though sometimes for the right reasons.
I’ll be reviewing White Lies by Lynn Michell next.