The Accident - C.L. Taylor

Reading Challenge Category: Free Audiobook

Official Blurb:

Sue Jackson has the perfect family but when her teenage daughter Charlotte deliberately steps in front of a bus and ends up in a coma she is forced to face a very dark reality.
Retracing her daughter’s steps she finds a horrifying entry in Charlotte’s diary and is forced to head deep into Charlotte’s private world. In her hunt for evidence, Sue begins to mistrust everyone close to her daughter and she’s forced to look further, into the depths of her own past.
Sue will do anything to protect her daughter. But what if she is the reason that Charlotte is in danger?

My Thoughts:

I listened to this book as an audiobook, and I think this was the best thing for the book. The narrator was fantastic, doing different voices for each character, and she made the story exciting. I think if I had read this as a regular book, I might have gotten a little bored.
Not a lot happens for a very long time. You know it is leading up to something, and it is this that keeps you reading (listening).
Each chapter starts in the present day, where Sue is trying to find out what has happened to her daughter, who is cruelty in a coma. Everyone she speaks to is being very evasive, and it was frustrating that she didn’t push some people harder for answers. When you thought she was going to, as the tension built, she would suddenly end up in a different scene having walked away from the confrontation none the wiser.
The majority of each chapter is concluded with a time in Sue’s past when she was dating James. At first, these parts seemed relatively mundane, with not a lot happening, and this side of the story escalated slowly into something much more enjoyable. I found myself rushing through the ‘now’ parts to get to these updates, as they proved the most exciting part of the story. However, for a very long time, you don’t really understand the relevance, although you can begin to guess how they will become related.
The ending seemed very messy and overcomplicated. A few things I felt were left unanswered, such as why Charlotte broke up with Liam? Even though I had anticipated such an explosion at the end, it did feel a bit of a letdown. Plus, where were the nurses for all that time, especially when Charlotte’s monitor was erratic before being switched off!
I’m afraid to say that this isn’t the best of Cally Taylor’s books and probably the first that I would have given up on if I had been reading it in a conventional way. As I say, the narrator really saved it and kept me listening!