All the Rage by Cara Hunter Book Review

Book Title: All the Rage

Author: Cara Hunter

My Rating: 3.5*

Publisher: Penguin

Publication Date: 23/01/20

Genre(s): Mystery, Crime, Thriller

Pages: 416

Format Read: Ebook

Goodreads: A teenage girl is found wandering the outskirts of Oxford, dazed and distressed. The story she tells is terrifying. Grabbed off the street, a plastic bag pulled over her face, then driven to an isolated location where she was subjected to what sounds like an assault. Yet she refuses to press charges.

DI Fawley investigates, but there's little he can do without the girl's co-operation. Is she hiding something, and if so, what? And why does Fawley keep getting the feeling he's seen a case like this before?

And then another girl disappears, and Adam no longer has a choice: he has to face up to his past. Because unless he does, this victim may not be coming back...


The novel starts with a teenage girl who has been snatched off the street with a bag over her head and her hands cable tied but she won’t press charges and we don’t know why. But then another girl goes missing and the case gets a lot more serious. Even though it is the 4th book in a series, it can be read as a standalone, which is how I read it. It was easy to catch onto but it might have been better if I was more connected and knew more about the characters from the previous books. 

The story is fractured and goes back and forth between characters so it was quite difficult to remember and separate what was going on in each narrative. You have to concentrate to keep up with the constant changes of perspective so I had to read it in big chunks at a time or I’d forget about important information.

Most of the characters are likable. DI Adam Fawley, the main character, is a good detective and treats his colleagues with respect but sometimes doesn’t know how to handle news. This case puts pressure on his relationship with his pregnant wife for reasons that are eventually made clear and makes him re-evaluate a case exactly like this one that happened 20 years previous. He helped convict the ‘Roadside Rapist’ 20 years ago but Gavin Parry has always insisted he was innocent. The similarities of this case make everyone question was the wrong man framed for these crimes?

There are a lot of twists and turns and for once I think there were too many things going on, too many red herrings and dead ends and I started to wish I could just get to the end sooner rather than later. I have mixed feelings about the ending as I have never read anything with the result like this and it bothered me who the culprits were and it just felt unrealistic to me. The author made out that the suspects were some kind of criminal masterminds the way the murder was revealed and I found it hard to believe that the person responsible would have thought of every little thing.

Overall it is a good crime thriller novel with a good plot that keeps you reading to find out who did it but it had too many twists and dead ends to reveal the culprits and the fractured narrative can be a bit confusing.

Have you read this novel or do you want to read it?
Let me know in the comments!