The Nurse’s Secret - Liz Lawler

Reading Challenge Category: Free ARC from NetGalley

Official Blurb:

Loving wife. Caring nurse. Liar.
You trust her with your life… She has a deadly secret.
In hospital, lives begin and end every day.
The doctors and nurses work round the clock to keep their patients breathing, yet death is part of their routine.
When the police arrive in the brightly lit corridors, asking for pretty, young, Nurse Shaw, staff and patients start talking.
The say Sarah Shaw’s husband has been murdered. They’d only been married for a few short months.
The police want to know where Sarah was that night. And why the medicine went missing from the hospital a few days before.
As William Shaw’s complicated past unravels it’s clear that Sarah has secrets of her own. But as she delivers pills in paper cups with a stiff smile and shaking hands, her patients want to know, is she a killer, or is her life in danger too?

My Thoughts:

This is a very slow book with unlikeable characters.
This had such an interesting premise that I was excited to read it, plus I’ve loved this author’s work in the past. However, once past the first couple of chapters, the story settles down into mediocrity. It just plods along with the investigation into William’s death but doesn’t seem to get anywhere. Nor does it feel like the police are asking the right questions or being very proactive.
Nick’s storyline was tough to follow initially; he’s been away and returned, but no one seems to know anything about his life. Not his friends, work colleagues or the person that has known him since he was a little boy. Then his actions towards the end are just bizarre; he just runs off stage away from his boss and his problems. It was very amateur and childish for someone in his position.
Charlie is another strange character. It is written like he is 70 and near to retiring. However, we find out he is only in his 50s, and this alone is shocking.
Sarah seems like a straightforward character, but she is so dull. Nothing about her makes me interested in anything she does or says. As she is the main female protagonist, this made the book very hard to read.
There are many over-the-top police procedural explanations, and I found that all overwhelming and hard to follow.
The ending was predictable, and I’d guessed who the killer was and why very early on; Sarah’s past was the only interesting thing that held the story together. However, even that was overcomplicated.
I felt very dissatisfied at the end; I didn’t feel as if I got all the answers or even really understood everything that was going on. Whereas at the same time, it really felt like the ending dragged on, and I just wanted to be done with the book. Not a good read for me, I’m afraid, which is such a shame as I have enjoyed all previous books by this author.