The Shark, Emma Styles

A serial killer is stalking the suburbs of Perth in Western Australia, targeting young girls and women, swimmers whose bodies are later found on the shoreline. Their deaths are gruesome, the police slow to react, leaving two young women - Raych and Carmen - with feelings of disempowerment, anger and vengeance, who find themselves in the position of taking matters into their own hands. It's important to note that this is not yet another serial killer novel - it's a story of two young women who have had enough.

THE SHARK is a novel built on fury. The anger of young women who have had a gutful of being targets, and the lack of action on the part of authorities, and the sheer fury of the same young women who have had so much snatched away from them. In the case of Raych, her first love, when Piper disappears early in the killer's wave of attacks. For Carmen it's more complicated - an unhappy adoptive family, a bullying bitch of an adoptive sister, she's been pushed down and sidelined most of her life. Neither of these young women are easy to spend time with though. Not for the reader, or for each other, even as they team up, not prepared to sit around any longer and wait for the "other" to fix everything that has been done to them in their lives. Instead, in a very uneasy alliance they abduct and imprison the prime suspect for the killings, succumbing to the need for vengeance in a very visceral way, until events threaten to overtake, and their mistrust threatens to override their shared focus of never taking any shit from anybody ever again.

THE SHARK is propelling crime fiction, with a white hot anger at its core that this reader really REALLY appreciated, even whilst initially being a bit startled by it. That premise does result in a mess of tense, morally confused, uneasy alliances, and more than a hefty dose of obsession, but at the core of that is some serious heartbreak, and the rise of the disempowered, the "just had enough factor" that a lot of people are experiencing nowadays. The difference is in THE SHARK, no matter how messy, how weird, how dangerous and sometimes downright mad it all gets, at the core of all of that are young women who have sick of waiting for other people to fix things, and so do something. 

THE SHARK is sensationally uncomfortable reading. I loved the reminders of historical events that gave context to part of the anger. I loved the way that both Raych and Carmen are incredibly complex women with redeeming features, and elements about their characters that were prickly and unlikeable. I loved their inventiveness and grit, I understood their secrets, you could feel their pain and their fierce, flawed determination. I loved that their choices were murky and messy, and that they did something - no matter what - for their sisters, as much as for them.