There’s certainly nothing dead in the water about Robyn Nyx’s latest offering; Dead Pretty sees a departure from Nyx’s previous works of imagination with this fast paced, fast burn romantic intrigue novel.
A dapper FBI agent, a charming mortician turned TV star and an unhinged serial killer – what’s not to love?
Nyx gives us all of the above and more, from affable yet believable support characters to a mainline ‘Who Dunnit’ plot. Dead Pretty is the ideal mix of intrigue/thriller, romance and police procedural with the balance of all three being perfection. The plot aspects of each are interwoven so intricately that they seamlessly become one, unknowingly so at times, so absorbing is the overall story.
What i really enjoyed the most about this book is that in amongst the tinder fire level sex between the main characters Dak and CJ (who are the flipside of each other’s circumstances where their individual familial issues are concerned), the reacquaintance with a long lost best friend and dead police partners to name but a few, there is the core problem of who is the serial killer nicknamed ‘The Artist’? This question drives the plot and whilst Nyx presents readers with many potential perpetrators, i’d reached 90% before even beginning to have any concrete suspicions of the true perpetrator, never mind any inkling of the expertly crafted twist at the end. As such I don’t think many readers will foretell the ending – an often difficult achievement in this type of genre and yet a worthy testament to the quality of the plot and the skill of the author in attaining that outcome for the reader.
Whilst i don’t want to give too much away, after all the beauty of an intrigue/thriller plot is to get swept up in its fast paced nature all the while trying to figure ‘it’ out. What i will say, is that whilst this may be a different genre for Nyx, the aspects of her writing which many readers have grown to love are still wonderfully present (not least those exquisite sentences), they’re just all wrapped up in two emotionally unavailable yet complex main characters, with a serial killer on the loose to boot.
“But it felt like they were treading water, trying not to drown in the depth of the conversation waiting to be had.”
Robyn Nyx, Dead Pretty
From the beginning to the very last sentence, Dead Pretty is a rollercoaster of passion, tension and true intrigue that will have you skimming the pages as fast as you possibly can to answer to the ultimate question – Who is ‘The Artist’?
P.S. For an extra layer of fun, see if you can spot the Easter eggs to earlier works from Nyx and to Brey Willows’ books within this story.
I received an ARC of this book for review from Butterworth Books, in exchange for an honest review.
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