ARC Review – The Space Between, by Dete Meserve

The Space Between, by Dete Meserve
Coming July 24, 2018
Preorder:
Amazon
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Blurb via GoodReads:

After presenting a major scientific breakthrough to a rapt audience across the country, renowned astronomer Sarah Mayfield returns home to a disturbing discovery. Her husband, Ben, a Los Angeles restaurateur, has disappeared, leaving behind an unexplained bank deposit of a million dollars, a loaded Glock in the nightstand, and a video security system that’s been wiped clean. The only answers their son, Zack, can offer are the last words his father said to him: keep the doors locked and set the alarm.

Sarah’s marriage was more troubled than anyone suspected, but now she is afraid that her husband’s recent past could be darker than she dares to admit. Suspecting that nothing about Ben’s vanishing is what it seems, Sarah must delve into the space between old memories, newfound fears, and misleading clues to piece together the mystery of her husband’s disappearance—and find what she hopes in her heart is the truth.

This was a great summer read! I got completely pulled into the story and I finished it in a day.

I really loved Sarah as a protagonist; I’m a sucker for a story with a female scientist, and Sarah is a high-ranking researcher for NASA who weaves her knowledge of astronomy into how she processes everything in her day-to-day life. Sarah’s way of thinking was engaging, and the story touched on her struggles as a woman in a STEM field; she feels underestimated based on her gender. Later on in the story, she also struggles with potential problems in her career due to the controversy and news coverage regarding her husband.

Overall, Sarah’s identity as a scientist worked really well, but there were a few passages that fell really flat for me. Meserve has a few lapses where really common knowledge seems to be presented as Sarah’s specialized knowledge from her work at NASA. For example, I don’t think any readers needed the protagonist to explain to us that moonlight is simply reflected sunlight. Conversely, passages such as the one that worked into the story the difference between a constellation vs. an asterism felt a lot more valuable and natural.

I do have to say that the mystery in this novel felt just a bit too heavy-handed on the foreshadowing and predictable to me. I was able to put the pieces together faster than the protagonist; however, this didn’t seem to be as much as a detriment to the story as it could have been. Meserve was able to get me invested enough in the characters that I felt content to watch Sarah work through the mystery after the conclusion felt relatively obvious.

This was fun, fast-paced story which blended mystery, suspense, and just a touch of romance. A great beach read for this summer.

Dete Meserve is also the author of Good Sam and Perfectly Good Crime. 

(I received an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.) 

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