The Girl Who Broke The Rules: Dark, Twisty, and Relentless
Reviewing The Girl Who Broke The Rules by Marnie Riches is hard.
Let me explain.
All the elements I love
in a crime thriller are masterfully depicted against the backdrop of the seedy
underbelly of Amsterdam.
The suspense is
relentless; the characters unyielding.
Shifting timelines and
switching points of view offer reprieve from the most gruesome depiction of madness
and perversion.
The feverish
storytelling never lets up and the palpable sense of danger and menace lingers
like a shadow with a scythe.
Then there’s Georgina McKenzie. George. The feisty and
sometimes irreverent heroine who brings emotional turmoil to an already besieged
Chief Inspector Paul van den Bergen, who’s at his breaking point.
For a heroine, she’s not all that likeable. Therein
lies the rub. It’s difficult to reconcile the fact that I love this sequel so
much, but have a hard time “liking” George. But liking a main character is never a rule to enjoying
a twisted macabre tale. If it were, I certainly broke it (ha! See what I did
there?)
Likeable or not, George is a compelling character that
not only adds intrigue to an already twisted story, but also thrusts readers
into a literary quandary: “Does a character
have to be likeable?”
Combining a dark, twisty plot with skillful writing makes
The Girl Who Broke The Rules an
absolutely gripping thriller! ★★★★★ 5/5
