The Fields by Erin Young
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
**3.5-stars**
It all begins with a body in a corn field.
Before we get started, can I just say that I find corn fields to be terrifying. There’s just something about them. I can’t. Who knows what is lurking in there…
Seeing one mentioned in the synopsis for The Fields, I knew that I wanted to read this debut Crime Thriller.
Sergeant Riley Fisher, the head of investigations for Black Hawk County Sheriff’s office is shocked, upon arriving on scene, when she discovers she knows the victim.
Even though Riley and Chloe went their separate ways in their teen years, Riley is still rattled to the core by her estranged friend’s tragic death.
The corn field is owned by a local co-op, Zephyr Farms, one of the very few to survive the crushing presence of Big Agriculture.
Does Chloe have a connection to this place? How did she end up here and who would have wanted to harm her?
Riley dives deep into this investigation. After all, it’s personal and soon finds herself in a dangerous world of politics and very big business. Not a comfortable place to be by any means.
As more bodies start dropping, the pressure increases, with Riley pushing herself to her limits in order to get to the bottom of these cases before more innocent lives are loss.
While parts of this intrigued me, mostly the murdery bits, I felt like the structure of the story lost me at times. There were certain aspects, or sections, ((I’m not quite sure how to best explain what I mean)) that felt out of place and it would kick me out of the story.
Along a similar vein, for me the pace was off, with my interest coming and going in waves.
There was a solid mystery here, but at times it felt overshadowed by other things; namely politics, which personally, I could have done without.
With all of this being said, please don’t take this the wrong way. I did enjoy this book. I see a lot of promise in Young’s writing and would pick up the next book in the Riley Fisher series.
This is a good start to series. I liked Riley a lot and look forward to learning more about her in the next installment.
She has a dark cloud hanging over her, a bit of a secret history, and I really want to know what that’s all about. I’m hoping in the next book she’ll spill it.
So yeah, this wasn’t a perfect read for me, or the most memorable, but I did enjoy it enough to continue on with the series. I’m actually looking forward to it.
Thank you so much to the publisher, Flatiron Books, for providing me with a copy to read and review. I appreciate it!!