The Cutaway by Christina Kovac is described as being “perfect for fans of Paula Hawkins and Gillian Flynn,” so as a fan of those two books, I was happy to receive an advance copy from Atria Books and NetGalley in exchange for my honest review.
I tend to enjoy books about the inner workings of media when they are written by someone with actual real world experience – and Ms. Kovac has seventeen years of experience in broadcast news, so I figured this was drawn for stories and people with whom she had worked in the past, and for me it rang true.
The story is set in Washington, D.C., and includes elements from news, politics and crime as it follows Virginia Knightly, a TV news producer, who receives an unsettling notice about a young attorney who is missing. The woman was last seen leaving a fancy restaurant after a domestic dispute, and Virginia finds herself investigating the disappearance on her own as her skeptical colleagues aren’t on board with her suspicions.
The pace is fast, the characters well-drawn, and the corruption among the police, the politicians and the press are pervasive…and creepy as we enter into an era marked with unsettling links between business and government following the recent election.
Described as a “psychological thriller,” it will appeal to fans of stories such as Big Little Lies, Gone Girl, Girl on a Train and Missing, Presumed.
My husband found a few details that, for him, disturbed the flow of the narrative – things along the lines of “wait, if she had lost her wallet, how did she…” so I felt I couldn’t give it five stars, but those didn’t really bother me, and I hope this is the first in a series of stories involving Virginia Knightly!
Four stars.