Broadchurch novel cover image

What the blurb says: “It’s a hot July morning in the Dorset town of Broadchurch when Beth Latimer realises her eleven-year-old son, Danny, is missing. As Beth searches desperately for her boy, her best friend, local police officer DS Ellie Miller, arrives at work to find the promotion she was promised has been given to disreputable Scottish outsider DI Alec Hardy.

When Danny’s body is found on the beach Ellie must put her feelings aside as she works with DI Hardy to solve the mystery of Danny’s death. As the case becomes a murder investigation, the news hits the press, jolting sleepy Broadchurch into the national spotlight.

As the town’s secrets begin to unravel, members of this tight-knit community begin to consider those in their midst. Right now it’s impossible to know who to trust …”

I was so excited to get my hands on this hotly anticipated novel.

Inspired by the BAFTA award-winning ITV series created by Chris Chibnall, Erin Kelly has done a fabulous job of capturing the atmosphere and tone of the show in this translation from screen to page.

True to the characters and honest to the story, what the reader gets from the novel is the chance to experience events from inside the heads of the main characters. It’s like seeing the whole thing in HD through a lens angled slightly differently, exploring the characters inner thoughts and emotional battles for a deeper insight into what happened that dreadful July when Danny died.

Told in the present tense, the novel feels immediate and dynamic. The tension arising from the different styles of DI Alec Hardy and DS Ellie Miller vibrates off the page and, as in the TV series, they make for compulsive watching (reading). As the small seaside town of Broadchurch reels from the loss of one of it’s own, and the police (and the journalists) strive to find Danny’s killer, it becomes clear that beneath their smiley exterior some locals have dark secrets in their past that once revealed will change the small seaside town forever.

So, the big question, does the book feel authentic to the characters and the series? Definitely, yes.

And, does it feel like a story and entity in its own right? Absolutely, yes.

Emotive and suspenseful, this is a must-read for fans of the show and crime fiction readers alike.

Highly recommended.

To find out more about the book, hop over to The Crime Vault where you can read an extract: http://www.thecrimevault.com/ebooks/broadchurch/

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