Clare Mackintosh excels at writing character-driven stories, and this one is no exception. The main character, Ffion, is gruff, blunt, and often too direct—but she’s also completely endearing. Her dry humor and offhand remarks had me smiling more than once.
Character and personality flaws are central to this story., from patient Leo to Allie the try-hard and Dave the absolute maniac. I liked Allie's antics, even though they were cringe-worthy, I think everyone has known an Allie, and there were a couple of times that I really felt for her.
As a police procedural, this worked well. The plot was engaging, and the characters felt real, like people you might actually know. The jurisdictional crossover was handled in a smooth way. and included some jockeying for position, as one would expect.
The one draw back was that there were a LOT of characters on The Hill and I found them a bit hard to keep sorted out sometimes.