The Fifth Petal by Brunonia Barry

My Rating: 3.5 Stars. 



Date finished: 22/2/18



Date published: 24/1/17



Synopsis from Goodreads: 






Could a witch hunt happen again in Salem? 

When a teenage boy dies suspiciously on Halloween night, Salem's chief of police, John Rafferty, wonders if there is a connection between his death and Salem's most notorious cold case, a triple homicide dubbed "The Goddess Murders," in which three young women, all descended from accused Salem witches, were slashed on Halloween night in 1989. He finds unexpected help in Callie Cahill, the daughter of one of the victims newly returned to town. Neither believes that the main suspect, Rose Whelan, respected local historian, is guilty of murder or witchcraft.

But exonerating Rose might mean crossing paths with a dangerous force. Were the women victims of an all-too-human vengeance, or was the devil raised in Salem that night? And if they cannot discover what truly happened, will evil rise again?

My Review:

This book is technically the sequel to The Lace Reader which I did actually begin reading but only read about 40 pages and just could not get into it. This books synopsis feels like a completely separate book from The Lace Reader. I'm not sure how much this book relates to its predecessor but I am aware that this book is about 20 years on from that? Or there abouts. 

So I picked this up because as you can see I really love my witch style books and so here is another book to add to that list. I generally really enjoyed this book but there were alot of the book that felt better than other parts of the book. The book is set in three parts and the third part really let down the rest of the book. I really enjoyed trying to figure out who the killer was and who the fifth petal was related to in relation to the witches and young women. 

My main gripe with this book was the massive time differences. At first, it was just a week here and there which made sense. However, in the third part of the book, it felt like Barry just needed to rush the ending and tell us what actually happened. There were massive gaps of months that were left unfilled. I felt like Barry could have spent more time here going through what Rafferty was doing about the murders and implication of Rose, rather than what Callie was up to abroad. 

The ending was quite a success in terms of finally finding out who the killer was, but that final part in the book was really just a complete let down to the rest of the book. I was getting a little bored and just wanted it to end. 

Overall, I did enjoy this book and the synopsis. Barry needs to work on her endings a little more as the rest of the book was very strong. Time jumping was something that I found was a big issue and although we don't need to know everything someone is doing in a book, things need to flow. 

Happy reading :)