Book Review - Cut To The Bone by Alex Caan - Rachel Reads Randomly Book #34

Amazon UK

Title:  Cut To The Bone

Author: Alex Caan

Format reviewed: Ebook

Source: Netgalley

Publisher: twenty7

Publication Date: 14th July 2016

Rating: 4 Stars

One Missing Girl. Two Million Suspects.

Ruby is a vlogger, a rising star of YouTube and a heroine to millions of teenage girls.

And she's missing . . .

But she's an adult - nothing to worry about, surely?

Until the video's uploaded . . .

Ruby, in the dirt, pleading for her life.

Enter Detective Inspector Kate Riley; the Met's rising star and the head of a new team of investigators with the best resources money can buy. Among them, Detective Sergeant Zain Harris, the poster boy for multiracial policing. But can Kate wholly trust him - and more importantly, can she trust herself around him?

As hysteria builds amongst the press and Ruby's millions of fans, Kate and her team are under pressure to get results, and fast, but as they soon discover, the world of YouTube vloggers and social media is much darker than anyone could have imagined.

And the videos keep coming . . .

Cut to the Bone was a book that had really attracted my interest, as I have recently become hooked on a couple of You Tuber's channels, so very curious to see a bit of the behind the scenes action as such. 

What became very apparent early on in this book, is that it is very hard to trust any of the information that is being revealed, or at least you need to remember it all and try to make sense of it all, but there are so many leads, hooks, red herrings and twists and turns as the story progresses that I was left reeling at the end of it. 

At times the sheer quantity of information and various threads made me have to put the book down for a bit while I processed the new leads, before I was able to continue. The story touches on all manner of issues, some of which were a lot more disturbing than others. 

As is often the case when I review a thriller I am being deliberately vague as to the details, purely for fear of accidentally giving away any of the plot that could be key. I was though fascinated by all the geeky technological details that were used, and all of Detective Sergeant Zain Harris' unorthodox methods of acquiring data from computers. I understood quite a lot of the details and its a stark reminder that you leave a digital footprint with every action you take online, and that even deleted data can be recovered in skilled hands. 

The main detective Kate Riley is hiding something in her personal life, and as her past is slowly revealed, I couldn't help but feel a lot of empathy for her, as she has had to make some quite difficult decisions in the past. 

Cut To The Bone is written in many short chapters, which is great for when you think just one more chapter, and the pacing is very good. At all times I was intrigued by the story, even if I wasn't 100% hooked, I definitely realised early on I had no idea at all who was behind Ruby's disappearance, but that I really wanted to know who it was, and why. 

This is a great debut thriller, and I really hope this isn't the last we will be seeing of Detectives Zain and Kate. 

Thank you to Bonnier Zaffre and Netgalley for this review copy. This was my honest opinion. 

It became apparent to me quite early on Monday that this would be the runaway leader from last weeks vote, and I can certainly see why so many of you are raving about it. It really is a contemporary thriller that keeps you on your toes. Thanks to everyone that voted for it, and please do see this weeks selection and have your say again.