East of England

by Eamonn Griffin

(I received an ARC of this book from Unbound/Unbound Digital through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Please accept my apology for finishing this book so late.)

(TW: violence. LOTS of violence.)

East of England is one of those novels where you root for the main character, but you’re not quite sure why. Dan Matlock is fresh out of a two week stay in prison. He immediately steals a car. Instead of deciding to travel to the west and escape from the situation that put him in jail, he heads east into the thick of everything. Instead of laying low, he immediately starts causing trouble.

I found the plot pretty fascinating. The violence in the book probably should bother me more than it did. Violence is very central to this book, so if you don’t like it, this may not be the best pick.

The writing style was hard of get used to and was a little frustrating. Griffin switches between complete sentences and sentence fragments, and that sometimes come off as choppy. It fits the style of story pretty well, but again, it can be frustrating. It was also sometimes hard to tell who was speaking, but I think most of the blame for that lies on me.

Overall, I do recommend this book. I would’ve been fine if this was a stand-alone, but since that seems to be rare these days, I will probably be reading the sequel; I’m not anxious for it to be published, but I will be looking forward to see where Matlock heads in the future.