Book Review: "Sheep's Clothing" by Celia Dale

I read a Celia Dale book before and I have to admit I did not quite like it as much as I thought I would. It was on a recommended list after I had finished reading Mrs March. The book was called A Helping Hand and it was sub-par in comparison to Mrs March. I had therefore put Celia Dale off for a while until I ran into Sheep's Clothing which sounded quite interesting from the storyline but failed to impress when it came to writing style.

About two con women who are called Grace and Janice who gain entry into the houses of elderly people and steal their stuff. Honestly, it starts off alright because you do not suspect that anything is going on until after the first chapter ends. However, from there because of the changing perspectives and the weird fumbles in the story it turns into a murder mystery which falls out as not very interesting. The predictability of the mystery mixed with the movement that constantly shifts the atmosphere meant that I couldn't really get invested in the story before someone's perspective changes again. There were many that I thought too, I wanted to know more about before they simply stopped. There was a lot of gap-filling and though it could've been better, it felt a bit messy from time to time.

As the book progresses, it loses the atmosphere and tension that was so particular of the first half of the book. Be that as it may, the characters of Grace and Janice were still interesting to learn about, though the other characters did not get enough for me to feel like I knew them and yet, they were still important to the storyline in some way. These are characters such as Dave.

Both women having met in prison is an interesting dynamic that I enjoyed learning about. The criminal track records and the fact that there were no strings attaching them to anywhere. These were real con artists who did not care about anyone else but themselves. As they were older women, this was even more interesting. However, I would have liked to learnt more about their backgrounds and growing up - maybe someone should write a prequel book.

I do have to say that the title is a bit of a giveaway. There is no mystery about what the title means and after you have read one or two chapters, you can kind of figure it out. Hey, even if you just read the blurb you can figure it out. I know I should not be upset about the titles of books but sometimes, when they are as obvious as this, I have to say that it could have been better if it was just named after its protagonist. There is a lot to be said about simplicity as opposed to obviousness.

Celia Dale's book always have women in distressing or stressful situations and this is one thing I do quite admire about her books (or what I have read of them so far). But in this book I felt like there was just too much 'stuff' going on for me to drown in the book. I felt myself getting extracted from the novel every now and again with each movement and I have to admit though I say it was the moving perspectives it was also the shift of what was happening. From a murder mystery to a weird scam to a forbidden romance - all I am saying is that I would like more of a longer novel if I were going to read something with so much 'stuff' in it.

All in all, I chose to give this a 3/5 because it was written well at the beginning and the storyline managed to get my attention pretty well. Although it went a bit messy it could just be my personal preferences which meant I couldn't get lost in this novel as much as I would have liked to. Ultimately, I think that if this book was about 50-60 pages longer and had some more atmosphere, story and explanation, I would have given it more marks and more time. I just was not completely for me.