A Traitor in the Family by Nicholas Searle
Nicholas Searle is the author of the bestselling book, Good Liar. I’ll admit that I’ve never actually read it, but Good Liar sounds amazing and I would love to read it in the future. However, I cannot say the same for A Traitor in the Family… it was slightly disappointing.
Francis O’Neill is a terrorist, trained to kill for his cause. Bridget is his wife, expected to be loyal and stand by her husband. She has learned not to hope for much more, until the day she glimpses, for the first time, the chance of a new life. A life without violence, without secrets, and without knocks on the door in the dead of night. A life without her husband.
But what if freedom for Bridget means grave danger for Francis?
When reading the blurb of this book, it sounds amazing; a thriller to keep you on the edge of your seat. But it just didn’t do it for me. I was 100 pages in and I wasn’t hooked, it didn’t interest me, the characters weren’t very appealing. I was actually disappointed in myself for not enjoying.
The pace of the book did pick up after around 200 pages. Tensions are high within Francis’ close circle and to be honest, I was eager to see how everything would turn out; would they ever be caught?; would Bridget continue in the same life?
What was also interesting is that this book is first set in the 1980s and spans the year to the 2000s. We get to see how a close community works together and fights for what they believe in, we see how the people left on the sidelines of the operations have to deal with loneliness and juggle what is right and wrong. It is a very interesting concept and I think that if the characters were more fleshed out, it would have been more enjoyable. The characters just seemed bland. Which is a huge shame because I feel like the characters WERE the plot. Everything revolved around them.
Even though I was very disappointed with A Traitor in the Family and would have loved to have seen more action, more three-dimensional characters and a better pacing (it seemed rushed), I like the idea that Searle had come up with and I like the concept of showing the organisation over a couple of decades. However, it just fell flat for me.
Disclaimer: this book was sent to me by the publisher in exchange for an honest review