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Expiry Date by Rachel Ward



When a body is discovered under a factory, the status quo of the community is shook to its core. However, it is only when shop workers, Bea and Ant begin to question what really happened that information about more horrific events come to light.

Kingsleigh itself, the town in which the story takes place, can be seen as being cosy and idyllic. Although, this view is radically changed when Bea investigates into the body which has been found. The more that she researches through the history of Kingsleigh itself, the more that she discovers that nothing is as good as it seems, especially from the people that she knows the most. This creates the search for clearing someone's name most close to her, she must first be able to dig deep into some of the secrets that have been locked away until now. However, this poses the question of whether no one is truly innocent in this game and everyone could be a suspect.

The great thing about this book is that its not predictable. In fact, there are many occasions throughout the book where certain events change your perception of people and how they might relate to the mystery of the body and who could have been involved. This is interwoven into many other subplots which deal with how there are many other stories which can be seen to be relevant and can carry some weight to the overall storyline. There are some important themes that are presented throughout which are very relevant and ongoing such as domestic abuse and asking for help when needed and that there is always someone around the corner ready to step in. But this could also be seen as being a detriment due to how there was a lot to focus on. However, when you look at it it can be resembled to how small town life is an array of stories which are stitched together to make one big picture.

The lovely part I found about Bea and Ant is their compassion and empathy that they both have to their community. It is shown through their relationships with friends and family and the customers while working in a shop. You can really feel the element that this is a real and breathing world and sometimes reminds me of my own experiences and makes me laugh at how authentic they are to reality.

I quite liked the character Ant, who seems like the ying to Bea's yang, or the Watson to Bea's Sherlock. He can be described as being the rational one out of the relationship who is able to tell Bea when maybe she should take a few steps back and evaluate the information she has discovered and the tactful way in which she is able to use it.

However, I also found some problems with the pacing of the story itself. There were times where I felt very frustrated with how quickly the investigation was taking and whether they are still investigating the same event. At times it felt chaotic, are they interested in one particular event or numerous ones? It felt like the storyline was only starting to pick up and become juicy half-way through the book and the first half was more of a set up. I think it made it a bit more difficult coming into the third book of this series as I did not have the same sort of connections between characters that you could have done from reading the first two. Therefore, my care for the people of Kingsleigh was not as much compared to if I started the series at the beginning. However, I am not sure whether my opinion is not the best on thrillers of this calibre as I am very impatient to know who it is, rather than spend the time taking the journey to find out the real culprit.

When I first started reading this book, I really felt like I wanted to give this book four stars, but I felt like this might be biased in the experiences that I have had in the past. However, the more that I delved into the book I felt as though there were some elements that just weren't sitting with me well and so for that I rate this book three stars.
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