Book info

• Title Dark Tides
• Author Chris Ewan
• Year 2014
• Genre Thriller

When Claire Cooper was eight, her mother disappeared during Hop-tu-naa, the Manx Halloween. When Claire was eighteen, she and her friends took part in a Hop-tu-naa dare that went terribly wrong. Now in her early twenties and a police officer, what happened that Hop-tu-naa night has come back to haunt them all, and Claire must confront her deepest fears in order to stop a killer from striking again.

Thoughts

Really enjoyed this book, although it’s dark underbelly was a little bit disturbing in places. I had guessed the bad guy almost from the start but that didn’t take away from the story at all. Here we have a traditional crime tale - a group of young friends commit a misdeed, and then are hunted down in the future in an act of revenge.

I liked Claire, the main character, as she was by no means a perfect detective. In fact, her being a detective was barely a factor in the story at all, which made it nicely different from most crime books. Although there was quickly a sense of foreboding about each activity that was undertaken, horror movie style, it still felt quite refreshing and new.

The brooding setting of the Isle of Mann helps too, windswept, rocky, coastal, with the added heritage and horrors that the TT brings as well. A really good read, I enjoyed it.

Rating: 4 / 5