Review: While You Were Sleeping by Kathryn Croft

While You Were Sleeping by Kathryn Croft
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I really enjoyed reading The Girl You Lost so I was really pleased when I was approved for a arc of this one by netgalley and was looking forward to getting comfy in my favourite chair and enjoying a really good book.The synopsis made the story sound like my sort of thriller and the story does have quite a few twists and red herrings that keep the reader guessing.The mystery of who murdered Tara`s neighbour Lee was intreguing,my problem with the book was the actions and behaviour of the characters.

Tara Logan's quiet life starts to fall apart one morning after she wakes up next to the very dead body of her neighbour Lee Jacobs.She is naked and can't remember what happened the night before but she does know one thing,she didn't kill him.She doesn't want to break up her already dysfunctional family so instead of calling the police she gets dressed and goes home and tries to pretend that the awful event never happened.Even when her seventeen year old daughter Rosie becomes under suspicion Tara still doesn't say anything about being at her neighbours house that night.The story is narrated by Tara who is a very frustrating and indecisive character especially when it came down to the quilt or innocence of her daughter.The most annoying thing about Tara and something that really puts me off when it happens in a book is that almost every male character that interacted with her throughout the book wanted to be involved with her romantically including DCI Holden Hunt (that name cracked me up...lol) who was quite happy to share the details of the investigation with her and came running everytime she called him.Most detectives need evidence before they question a suspect,not this detective,Tara says that they are acting suspiciously so that`s enough for him.

Tara`s husband Noah was a hypocrite who did a runner when he found out something about Tara that he didn't like even though he told his fair share of lies himself.

I think that Rosie was a telling so many lies because it was her way of trying to get some attention from her parents.Rosie had a younger brother called Spencer who was a goody goody little Angel and obviously was their parents favourite.He spent the whole of the book either watching films or at his grandparents or friends house, when he was at home everyone had to talk quietly so that Spencer didn't catch wind of the problems in the house.The problem will that was if he was as clever as Tara insisted that he was then he would have worked out that something was wrong all by himself.

I gave the book two stars because I thought the premise was good,any one of a number of the characters could have been the killer and there was a interesting twist at the end.From reading through the other reviews I can see that I am in the minority but unfortunately I didn't enjoy this book as much as I did The girl you Lost but it won't stop me reading more books by this author in the future.

Many thanks to Bookouture for a arc of this book in exchange for a honest review.