"There was always something slightly dangerous about Joan. So, when she turns up at private investigator Henry Kimball’s office asking him to investigate her husband, he can’t help feeling ill at ease. Just the sight of her stirs up a chilling memory: he knew Joan in his previous life as a high school English teacher, when he was at the center of a tragedy.
Now Joan needs his help in proving that her husband is cheating. But what should be a simple case of infidelity becomes much more complicated when Kimball finds two bodies in an uninhabited suburban home with a “for sale” sign out front. Suddenly it feels like the past is repeating itself, and Henry must go back to one of the worst days of his life to uncover the truth.
Is it possible that Joan knows something about that day, something she’s hidden all these years? Could there still be a killer out there, someone who believes they have gotten away with murder? Henry is determined to find out, but as he steps closer to the truth, a murderer is getting closer to him, and in this hair-raising game of cat and mouse only one of them will survive."
The Kind Worth Saving is the second installment in Henry Kimball/Lily Kintner, a mystery thriller series by Peter Swanson.
To be honest, the only reason I read this book was because I put a copy for the third book in the series without realizing and, naturally, I can't just skip over the second book and had to read that first. I don't know why I decided to do that either because I didn't really have any intention to continue reading this series.
I was rather satisfied with how the first book ended, even though it did leave opportunities open for a series, and didn't feel the need to delve deeper into this world. And that same feeling remained as I read this because this book didn't really have anything on The Kind Worth Killing. The premise and the way Swanson went about constructing the plot were rather unique at first, but it doesn't really work a second time. That led to this book, despite not being bad, being rather unremarkable and unexciting.
I wasn't captivated by the plot at all and I struggled to get through this even though it is a book I should have easily read in one sitting. Part of why I also struggled reading this was because of how repetitive it got. Despite the multi-perspectives and dual timeline, I get reading the same scenario over and over again. I also found that the author's choice to progress the story by moving backward led to very little actual progression at all. If you cut down all the repetitions the story could have easily been effectively told in 100 pages.
Finally, I felt let down, not by the book per se but by the reviewers who said that Lily was back and as cunning as ever. She is in less than 5% of this book... To be fair, it could have made the book far more interesting had the author chose to focus more on Lily than Kimball, but he didn't, and I feel let down by whoever led me on.
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