Review: Sacrifice

Author: Sharon Bolton

Started reading: May 30th 2022

Finished the book: June 19th 2022

Pages: 384

Genres: Mystery, Thriller

Published: June 9th 2009

Source: Bought the book

Goodreads score: 3.91

My score:

Synopsis

In this masterful debut that starts off as a mystery and becomes much more, Tora Hamilton is an outsider at her new home on the rocky, wind-swept Shetland Islands, a hundred miles from the northeastern tip of Scotland. Though her husband grew up here, it’s the first time he’s been back in twenty years. Digging in the peat on their new property, Tora unearths a human body, at first glance a centuries-old bog body, interesting but not uncommon. But realizing that the body is in fact much newer, that the woman’s heart has been cut out and that she was killed within a few days of bearing a child, Tora, herself an obstetrician, becomes obsessed with finding out what happened to her—even when the police, her colleagues and eventually her husband warn her against getting involved.
Sacrifice is a bone-chilling, spell-binding debut that will grip readers from its beginning to its startling end.

My thoughts

Thanks to Arjen for reading this book together with me! It was a rollercoaster ride and I always felt excited to pick up this book and I was also able to read it fairly quick! It's a good mystery, thriller but at times it's also very graphical. I think this is a fun standalone to read if you're looking for something fast and exciting to read!

Pros

• Danger: I felt like there was REAL danger in this book. Some parts and situations were really scary and there are actually characters that die! No one is safe. I also had that oppressive feeling that you can trust nobody in this book.
• Mystery: Sometimes I have a bit of a hunch where things are going. I get some clues, I can figure it out. But the really good books make it so you have no idea! And that's what happened in this book. I was thinking to myself at various points: "How?! What happend?! What is logical?!" And I couldn't come up with anything. I loved that.
• Main character: I LOVED the main character! She's a stubborn, headstrong and smart woman. Those were also character traits that were necessary for this book to even be there, but I just loved her. I can't stand naïve/dumb characters who don't speak their mind and Tora was exactly the opposite and everything I love in a main character. Her strong suits also seemed to be her weaknesses; she felt very real.

Cons

• Graphical: Some parts in this book, especially in the beginning were VERY graphical. I usually don't really mind, but lately I've been shying away from scenes like that. There were some parts in a morgue that I had to skip. I got the gist of it and that was fine for me, I didn't need all the very graphical details.
• Far fetched: The ending was good, but also at certain points really far fetched. I felt that the legend in this book was unnecessary, but I also was a bit surprised that nobody ever asked questions about the things happening in this book. So yeah. The ending was good and full of thrills, but also made me "meh" a bit, so that's why I took 1 star from the overall rating!

Overall

A really thrilling, exciting and great mystery book with an amazing main character.

The whole setting on the Shetland Islands was amazing and added a lot to the overall feeling in this book. I think that this was Sharon Bolton's debut and I think she did friggin' good!

Other opinions on this book

"A dazzling de but in thriller-writing: fast paced, gripping and full of atmosphere."

- Classic FM

"Splendidly crafted, deeply disturbing first novel."

- The Times

Thanks for reading!

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