The Angel Maker By Alex North

*Received an ARC of The Angel Maker from the publishers through BookishFirst

I’ve tried to write a good summary for The Angel Maker, but I keep coming up short, leaving out details I should bring up but explaining too much at the same time. I’m going to paste the synopsis here instead.

Growing up in a beautiful house in the English countryside, Katie Shaw lived a charmed life. At the cusp of graduation, she had big dreams, a devoted boyfriend, and a little brother she protected fiercely. Until the day a violent stranger changed the fate of her family forever.

Years later, still unable to live down the guilt surrounding what happened to her brother, Chris, and now with a child of her own to protect, Katie struggles to separate the real threats from the imagined. Then she gets the phone call: Chris has gone missing and needs his big sister once more.

Meanwhile, Detective Laurence Page is facing a particularly gruesome crime. A distinguished professor of fate and free will has been brutally murdered just hours after firing his staff. All the leads point back to two old cases: the gruesome attack on teenager Christopher Shaw, and the despicable crimes of a notorious serial killer who, legend had it, could see the future.

As someone who stays away from the Mystery/Thriller genre, I fully enjoyed North’s book. Truly invested in all of the storylines, the mystery behind how they’re connected kept me from putting the book down. I thought the build-up of how they’re related was a satisfying progression, and I thought North did a good job of revealing necessary information through each pov.

When I got to the point in the story where I can finally see where Fate comes into play, I was gripped by the paragraphs that described how wrong, or off the world seemed because defying Fate was like tipping the Earth off its axis. It was so captivating, especially when we see how the antagonist and professor took advantage of their knowledge of Fate to change the course of nature.

I do want to note that the first third of the book was slow for me because there are several characters I had to remember, their relationships, and the sequence of events/timelines. It was hard for me to appreciate the beginning because the groundwork is still getting laid for the rest of the mystery.

4.5 stars from me!