ARC Review: Bluebird, Bluebird by Attica Locke

Rating: ★★★☆☆

Genres: Mystery, Crime

Goodreads / Amazon

I have received this book via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

This was among the first books I received from Netgalley a few months ago, and it took me a while to read it, for the simple fact that I couldn’t connect to the story. It was a quite interesting premise – a double murder only two days apart from each other in a small town in East Texas where racism is rampant and justice is dealt in dubious ways. Ranger Darren Mathews is suspended, but he knows is aware of how crime is dealt with in those places, and decides to take matters in his own hands to find out who killed those people and how the murders are connected.

Despite the mystery itself being very interesting and the small town in Texas setting making me quite curious as well, this story fell a little flat for me. Darren’s actions a lot of times didn’t fully make sense to me and the flashbacks were added a bit awkwardly in the narration. I couldn’t connect much with the characters either and, although curiosity kept me turning pages to see who the killer was, at some point I stopped caring much – it felt like it was just a bunch of people who didn’t give information for pure stubbornness, and once all the flashbacks were done, capturing and deducing who the killer was wasn’t all that difficult anymore.

But in any case, it was a nice mystery to read, and the intricacy of the story was quite well done! I recommend this book if you generally enjoy stories set in Texas and whodunits!