Today I’m taking part in the blog tour for Dead Pretty. My review is written with thanks to Rachel Gilbey at Rachel’s Random Resources for inviting me on the tour and the publisher for my copy of the book.

Blurb:

1977 – Six student nurses embark on their nurse training at Harlow Wood Orthopaedic Hospital.
They are young, excited and soon develop a strong friendship bond within their cohort.
But there is a predator amongst them.
A man that takes great delight in killing young, pretty girls.
He’s done it before.
He watches their movements to decide which one is next.
And then he kills for the thrill.

A student disappears – quickly followed by another.
There are no leads, no evidence, and no bodies.
He’s clever.
But is he as astute as he thinks he is?

Review:

At the beginning of Dead Pretty, Joy Wood has written a dedication to her friends at Harlow Wood Orthopaedic Hospital. This suggests that she has used her own experience to inform parts of the novel. As a result, it was easy for me to picture the environment in which the characters lived as nursing students in 1977.

The majority of the chapters are written from the perspective of one of the students, and I appreciated that this approach helps the reader to get to know the characters and understand their lifestyle. It also gives us the opportunity to meet the staff with whom the students are working and work out who the potential suspects might be. Although the character development is interesting, I did feel that at times this was at the expense of the plot, which is more of a slow burn than I expected.

Having said that, I did not guess who the perpetrator was and the ending of Dead Pretty was cleverly executed.

Dead Pretty is available from Amazon.

You can follow the rest of the blog tour here: