Books On Tour (Review): The Accusation by Victoria Jenkins

I have to admit; I’m a little bit confused by this one. It started as one type of psychological thriller, then morphed into another about halfway through the book. Both halves were interesting in their own right.

Jenna is the perfect example of “no good deed goes unpunished.” She tries to help a woman in the park, but it backs up on her in a major way, throwing her life into absolute chaos. It doesn’t help that Jenna’s husband has been acting strangely, and her teenage daughter is rebelling against pretty much everything.

There are a few clues early on that there may be more in play than what meets the eye. And that’s where I got a little bit confused. It almost felt like the author tried to do too much to make it twisty. It could have been more straight forward, and it still would have been a great story.

Once the revelations started popping up, they led to more questions for me. I think the biggest one is that it seemed as if Jenna should have recognized the danger. I don’t want to say more than that (no spoilers), but I mean it in the very simplest of terms.

There were also more than a few red herrings; some were good, and some didn’t go anywhere. There were a couple that almost seemed as if they got edited out because they had promise. Then they were never mentioned again. It just lacked focus, I guess, is the best way to put it.

Now, I realize that what I just wrote may make it seem like I didn’t like the book, but that’s not true. I actually enjoyed it very much and read it in essentially one sitting. It was engrossing, and the author did a good job of offering a lot of little threads to weave into the overall story.

I also liked Jenna as the main character. She was strong and pretty much stood up for herself. And the author made her untrustworthy by the way Jenna interacted with her husband after the initial accusation. (It didn’t help that her husband was pretty much being a jerk, but he sort of did have reasons for that). Jenna’s initial dishonesty cast doubt on her character that carried through the entire book, right up until we find out the truth about why everything was happening.

So, I would still recommend this as a good psych thriller. I just wish there had been a tad more consistency.

Author Bio

Victoria Jenkins lives with her husband and daughter in South Wales, where her series of crime novels featuring Detectives King and Lane is based. Her debut novel The Girls in the Water is an Amazon UK top 30 bestseller, and top 5 bestseller in the Amazon US chart.

Her first psychological thriller, The Divorce, was published in July 2019. The second, The Argument, was published December 10^th 2019 and The Accusation publishes June 9th 2020.