I’ve read Caz Frear books before (the Cat Kinsella trilogy) and absolutely fell in love with Caz’s writing style and approach to crimes so I had high hopes for Five Bad Deeds.

It’s safe to say that this was completely different to the books I have read before though. The writing was still good and enjoyable and there was great character development but there was something about it that I just couldn’t entirely get behind.

It took a long time to really get to the real crime or mystery of the plot. It makes sense why it took so long because the characters themselves were essentially doing a waiting game to see who would show their hands first but it went on a long time. Realistically it took until at least page 300 to really get into it. Which is fine to an extent but it was also incredibly irksome because I did find myself growing a little impatient with it all.

It’s one of those things where if you hadn’t gone into reading Five Bad Deeds with any Caz Frear reading history you would very likely not have any issues with this at all but because I do it left me knowing there could have been more obvious plot development and a few more clues thrown to the reader for us to start to piece it together instead. And perhaps we don’t need to be looking for the answers or dissecting events of a plot constantly but for me I either need fast-paced action or to be thrown those things.

Unlike Frear’s previous books that I would happily recommend and re-read I am not too sure I would go to the lengths or re-reading this one or recommending it to others. In fact, just recently I suggested the Sweet Little Lies/Kinsella series to somebody when they asked for female lead crime related books but this one didn’t even cross my mind to suggest.

3/5 read. Was good. Pleased I finished it but nothing worth shouting from the rooftops about.