Reading With Tyler

Name: Fifty Fifty
Series: Eddie Flynn #5
Author: Steve Cavanagh
Publisher: Orion
Format: Kindle
Genres: Legal Thriller, Mystery, Contemporary, Crime, Adult
Noted Tropes: *I need to research more crime tropes! Else I’ll just put High Stakes every time!
Steam or Spice: None

Rating:

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Rating: 5 out of 5.

Review:

Fifty Fifty is book 5 in the Eddie Flynn crime legal, mystery, thriller that has me hooked!! I’d say these are interconnected stand alones – you don’t have to read the whole lot, but each book will reference previous plot lines so just be aware of that if you plan to read them out of order / just a couple. There are unlikely to be spoilers for other books in the review, but there may be. Any spoilers for Fifty Fifty will be hidden as normal.

I am convinced that Cavanagh is going to get better and better with each book in this series. I am addicted, and it’s amazing to watch as not only the characters grow and develop but the cases get more and more intriguing. Did you know that Steve Cavanagh was a lawyer? I didn’t know it, but suspected it because the court cases felt so real despite being fictional! So, that was a cool thing to have found out while I was reading the author’s note at the end of Fifty Fifty (I was still shocked by the ending of Fifty Fifty and so was continuing to read the ebook despite the fact that the book was over!).

Eddie Flynn is such a likeable character, despite having a history as a conman and being a lawyer… And in Fifty Fifty we’re introduced to a cast of characters that I am hoping (and have a strong inkling based on how the previous books have worked) that we’ll see a good portion of them again. Harper has shown up before, and I love her. Same with Harry. But we’re introduced to Kate and Bloch in Fifty Fifty and I loved them so freaking much – they added a lot to the way the story was told.

Fifty Fifty is told in multiple POVs including one from the killer, “She”, and Cavanagh navigates them all so well. We’ve got Eddie Flynn, lawyer to Sofia, Kate Brooks, lawyer to Alexandra, and “She” the actual killer as our POVs and it definitely gave an element of ‘who the heck can I trust’ to this one which I enjoyed. I will say, I always worry when we’re suddenly getting new POVs in anything, because if you don’t like the character / find what they’re up to to be interesting, it always puts a dampner on the book. Thankfully, Cavanagh’s ambiguous “She” chapters were gripping and were excellent at giving clues without really enabling you to make a good decision on anything… and Kate added another lawyer perspective that I didn’t hate and instead I was actually cheering for her! Even though she and Eddie were defending different people. Man, it was clever.

Not only are the good characters likeable, but in Fifty Fifty we’re dealing with two sisters who are both accusing the other of murdering their dad – brutally. And they are both so dislikeable – yet you end up trusting them both and if you’re anything like me you end up flip flopping through the evidence you’re presented as you try to figure out (along side Eddie) who the killer is! Add to that, the ambiguous “She” chapters I mentioned already, and holy crap it is hard to figure out which sister is good and which is bad. I absolutely loved how everything was presented and how it all ultimately came together.

It’s a no brainer that I will be continuing with this series. I love it, and selfishly never want it to actually end. For me, this was as good as Thirteen! Which was what got me into this genre and series in the first place! So I have high expectations for the following books now (but will honestly still probably have a great time because I love Cavanagh’s style).

“My biggest problem as a lawyer is I want the guilty to get punished and the innocent to go free. And the law doesn’t work that way. Never has. Never will.”