I am a huge fan of Dorothy Koomson, having loved the other novels I've read by her (including The Ice Cream Girls and The Friend), so I was incredibly excited to get the chance to read her newest release, The Brighton Mermaid. Dorothy’s writing has moved on a great deal since that book and she is one of the few authors writing who has managed to change genres very successfully.

Nell and Jude’s lives change overnight and whilst Nell struggles to understand why the police are convinced that she and her family have something to do with the body, Jude disappears. The secondary characters all leave memorable impressions and play a critical role in the story despite the main focus on Nell and Macy and even with the denouement in sight Koomson takes time to resolve their own individual stories and tie up loose ends. Nell and her best friend Jude found the body of The Brighton Mermaid, after they had crept out for a night out.

Someone seems to be watching her every move, and soon she starts to wonder who in her life she can actually trust. Depois de ler alguns livros da autora chego à conclusão que não tenho uma opinião, com meias medidas, sobre o que leio. Dorothy’s novels have been translated into over 30 languages, and a TV adaptation loosely based on The Ice Cream Girls was shown on ITV1 in 2013. um bom livro, tem um tom misterioso que é espetacular mas, sinceramente, as revelações, motivos, não me soaram muito convincentes… Acho que, já tendo lido tantos thrillers, policiais, mistérios, com as mais diversas revelações, já não é fácil surpreender-me. Dark secrets are being kept and we wonder when skeletons are going to come tumbling about- and where!

Brighton Beach, 1993 Teenagers Nell and Jude find the body of a young woman and when no one comes to claim her, she becomes known as the Brighton Mermaid. Queria ter a vida que imaginara que iria ter, com a Nell a meu lado, como minha melhor amiga, é um namorado decente. The book was thrilling from the very beginning, when Jude and Nell panicked over the sight of the body and seeing Nell still actively working on it twenty-five years later gave it a sense of urgency, a cold case finally being solved. Twenty-five years on, Nell is forced to quit her job to find out who the Brighton Mermaid really was - and what happened to her best friend that summer.Before posting, each Tripadvisor review goes through an automated tracking system, which collects information, answering the following questions: how, what, where and when. I usually quite enjoy Dorothy Koomson books but I found this one was very slow to get going and honestly a bit boring at times. Far superior to chick lit, Koomson’s well-realised characters are full of heart and her perceptive, honest and down to earth ordinary good humour throughout make her stories accessible. I wanted to have the life I thought I would live, as best friends with Nell, getting a proper boyfriend, passing my exams, going to university. She was about 11 years old when the murder of the Brighton Mermaid happened and she's also been holding in a major secret for nearly 25 years which has clearly taken a massive toll on her.