The Split

I wanted to love this so much. The writing was excellent, the premise intriguing and the beginning kicked off with a bang but it swiftly went downhill.

Felicity Lloyd is a glaciologist who's working on the remote Antarctic island of South Georgia. She chose this job because it provided safety and isolation from her past mainly Freddie a man who after his recent prison release relentlessly pursues her. And he won't stop until he reaches her.

Meanwhile, in Cambridge Joe, a psychologist is frantically working to uncover the truth about Felicity and Freddie's relationship. What he discovers is the key to setting Felicity free of her past and protecting her future. It's a mad race to get to Felicity before Freddie does. Will he make it in time to help her?

Every plot twist in this book disappointed me. Mainly because one of the major plot twists utilized a specific type of trope that was mishandled and dealt with poorly. I saw Bolton setting up for this twist and immediately knew what she was angling at. And when we get to the big revelation boy did I feel let down. While I can't speak to the representation of this particular trope being adequate I felt it tacky to use it as a twist in a story.

And, as if using this common trope as a plot twist wasn't enough they had another character essentially “out” the person to their co-workers before they even spoke to the character about it. Yikes!

Wait it gets worse there was an exploration of an inappropriate and unethical relationship as a romantic subplot which is just wrong on so many levels.

Felicity's handling of the Freddie situation became questionable when instead of discussing with her co-workers at the station that she had a stalker situation and filling them in on what was happening they would have definitely helped her. Instead, she chooses to flee into the wild to camp out alone during a dangerous snowstorm. Completely illogical.

And Freddie why are you chasing a person halfway across the country to “just talk”? Sir, you are fracking bizarre.

Things got even worse in the end. There was another shocking twist! Come to find out they're chasing the wrong person. The resolution to this twist is resolved within a paragraph while 95% of the story was written with a particular person being the culprit. The way this was done was anti-climactic for me, especially after the great effort they took in chasing down their person of interest.

Looking back at this review it's so vague but I didn't want to spoil anything in case someone wanted to check it out.

Hmmm... I didn't hate it, but I didn't love it either. Honestly, it was really just an entire story with nothing happening until the very end. That was the most enjoyable part for me.

This was a really fantastic read! The twists and turns kept coming and the author does a brilliant job of keeping you guessing!

I admit to it getting confusing at times, but that honestly didn't take away from the whole reading experience. It only added to it.

It was brilliantly written especially the scenic description of South Georgia. It really allowed you to picture the scenes.

At one point, when reading about Felicity's background (the lead up to her arriving in South Georgia) makes you think you're reading two completely different books but the author does an amazing job bringing the whole story together.

I totally would have read it in one go if I'd had the full book in front of me (another book read on Pigeonhole!).

I would definitely highly recommend this book! Up there with one of my favourite reads of 2020!

3.5

Sharon Bolton does it AGAIN! You think you know what's going on in the Split, but truthfully you don't. This book is a heart pounder, a could-not-put-downer, a page-turner, whatever have you this book is a must-read. I wish I could say more but doing so would ruin it for you, just trust me this once and pick this book up! asap.