Review: The Truth Waits

Title: The Truth Waits

Author: Susanna Beard

Publisher: Legend Press, Nov 1st 2018

Pages: 288 pages

How I Read It: ARC book

Genre: General Fiction (Adult), Mystery and Thrilllers.

My Rating: 4.5 cups

Synopsis:

Anna has everything worked out – a successful company, all the comforts she needs and no ties. But when she stumbles across the body of a young girl on a deserted beach in Lithuania, everything changes.

Anna is compelled to uncover the story behind the tragedy, despite concern from her partner, Will. Everything points towards sex trafficking, but as she searches, her own deepest secrets start to surface.

When Will disappears without a trace, Anna is pulled further into the murky world of organised crime. Time is running out for them all, and there’s a killer out there who will stop at nothing.

Beard enthralls the reader in this fast-paced psychological crime thriller. Anna serves as the perfect power-house protagonist, her daring escapades leaving the reader questioning: how far should one go to solve a murder?

My Thoughts

The Truth Waits starts off quite slow, but when it sped up, I was unable to put it down! Every chapter had me wondering what was going to happen next. It begins with the protagonist, Anna’s, business trip to Lithuania being extended due to a volcano erupting nearby. She decides to go for a walk on the beach and she discovers a young girl’s body.  

“The eyes of a young girl stare out at her, empty, lifeless.”

After her shocking discovery, she meets a man called Will and strikes up a friendship with him. He tells her about the human trafficking that goes on in that part of the world. She begins to wonder about the young girl she found. She also meets a couple who she immediately doesn’t like or trust.

“...they could be perfectly respectable. But I’ve learned that very often things are not what they seem.”

When she returns to England she finds that the discovery of the body has really affected her and she finds it extremely difficult to return to her normal life.

“...I can’t stop thinking about Margryta. I see her all the time, at night, in the street, in a magazine. It’s like she’s stalking me.”

The mixture of mystery and human relationships in this book made it a very compelling read and the balance between light and dark is expertly managed by Susanna. I began to realise that there was something in Anna’s past that made her unable to forget about the young girl and soon she was obsessing over finding out what happened to her. She is warned by several people to forget about it and move on, but she can’t.

“There’s a lot of very nasty organised crime around. Drugs, money laundering, people trafficking. You only need to scratch the surface and a lot of horrible nasties can crawl out and bite you.”

It was very clever of Susanna to be able to write in this way and all the loose ends were tied up at the conclusion. I enjoyed getting to know all the different characters along the way and their relationship to Anna.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who loves mystery and thrillers or even if you don’t! There’s a bit of everything in here, suspense, relationships, love, money, greed, power, tragedy and corruption.

“We have them...Now we must look after you.”

 

This review is based on a complimentary copy from the publisher and provided through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. The quoted material may have changed in the final release.