Jen Shaw has climbed all her life: daring ascents of sheer rock faces, crumbling buildings, cranes – the riskier the better. Both her work and personal life revolved around climbing, and the adrenaline high it gave her. Until she went too far and hurt the people she cares about. So she’s given it all up now. Honestly, she has. And she’s checked herself into a rehab centre to prove it.
Yet, when Jen awakens to find herself drugged and dangling off the local lighthouse during a wild storm less than twenty-four hours after a ‘family emergency’ takes her home to Cornwall, she needs all her skill to battle her way to safety.
Has Jen fallen back into her old risky ways, or is there a more sinister explanation hidden in her hometown? Only when she has navigated her fragmented memories and faced her troubled past will she be able to piece together what happened – and trust herself to fix it…
This is my first read of a novel by Jane Jesmond, however, I had seen On The edge several times across social media so I was pretty sure that it would be a good read.
Set in the wonderful County of Cornwall (incidentally, where my ancestors come from, they were tin miners around Redruth) this is a great debut novel and written with a pure love of the Cornish countryside and Cornish history.
We meet our heroine Jen Shaw checking herself out of rehab after 8 weeks and returning to her childhood home of Tregonna, after turning on her phone and receiving a message of help from her bother Kit. Well from that point on On The Edge will have you …on the edge lol! It’s a blooming great rollercoaster ride from Jen being drugged and finding herself dangling from a lighthouse to people smugglers, family dynamics and corrupt people in power… I loved On The Edge because it kept me invested with each page, Jen Shaw is a force to be reckoned with. She starts investigating how she managed to be in her hotel room one minute and next she is hanging off a lighthouse, only to be saved by her excellent climbing skills, and in doing so she opens a hornet’s nest of events that threatens to get her killed!
You can tell from Jane Jesmond’s writing that she loves Cornwall and has spent long enough living there to understand its people and how the tourist trade works, On The Edge, is written like a love story to Cornwall and the marvellous Tregonna, Jen Shaw’s family home has a huge role to play in the plot. I loved all the characters in On the Edge, I thought all were well-observed and well-written, and Jane Jesmond has created a great family dynamic, that I’m sure will be explored in further books.
The plot builds like a magnificent crescendo into a gripping ending and I was satisfied to finish it knowing that the bad people would be punished!
You know by now that I don’t give too much away when reviewing books, but if you like crime fiction with a strong female lead, written with a poetic love of the Cornish countryside, then you will want to read On The Edge.
I will give On The edge a 4-star rating, and I’m straight into reading book 2, Cut Adrift as I’m on the blog tour, look out for my post later in February.
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You can pre-order Cut Adrift HERE
