You Did This by Jamie Millen

You Did This is a serial killer thriller that keeps the questions coming.

 

Claire hated her sister, Tina. With the face of an angel and the mind and heart of a devil, Tina has everyone fooled. Claire hates the fact that Tina is their mom’s favourite and can do no wrong in others’ eyes while behind closed doors, she is a psychopath.

 

Claire is somewhat worried about the gaps in her memory, and on a day when she is supposed to walk Tina home from school but comes home bloody and with cuts, sans Tina, she begins to question her memory of falling down. Tina never makes it home and is found murdered.

 

Claire eventually leaves home, qualifies as a detective, and comes back to town to look into the case. But when she gets back and murders begin again, with girls that look like Tina and are the same age, and the memory gaps are still there, Claire begins to wonder if the fact that her mom blames her for Tina’s death has grounds.

 

With her new partner helping out and an old flame, now in the FBI, also roped in, Claire should be able to get to the bottom of this. When evidence begins piling up against her, Claire doubts her sanity and must decide what drastic measures she will take to solve the case.

 

But is she prepared for the shocking truth?

 

I really enjoyed it and didn’t enjoy it at the same time. I appreciated the twists and turns and the misdirection, but the ending was a little hard to swallow. Without giving away spoilers, surely some of the police procedures would not have been allowed or access that people had to evidence be more limited to outsiders?

 

First off, I understood Claire’s obsession with the truth and the memory gaps allowed you to follow on her path of doubt. But lots of decisions were questionable and she seemed to have more than luck on her side. It was a good example, however, of the damage that parental abuse can do to a child, and how that could influence which direction the child chooses to take.

 

While most of the secondary characters had parts to play and personalities in the book, I never really connected with any of them, including the ex-flame. Maybe it’s because there were so many red herrings that you weren’t quite sure who to trust and thus didn’t become involved with them. Lots of tangents also made you feel like you had to keep track of a lot when quite a bit of info became throwaway.

 

The sniper and what happened made me raise “the eyebrows” in disbelief and the hair dye... oh dear. Black hair to natural looking blonde in one pack and then keeping it as it takes a while to come out??? Bleach doesn’t “come out”!

 

I did appreciate that there was not a plethora of spelling mistakes or punctuation/grammar errors and that the book could be read while concentrating solely on the story. It kept me entertained so I’ll up the average rate and give it slightly higher just because I had to finish it and didn’t want to put it down before finding out the truth...