Sophie Hannah's "The Tennis Church" is about two women at their breaking points. It revolves around Charlie, a police officer begrudgingly spending Christmas with her in-laws. Perhaps not the distraction she would like, Charlie nonetheless gets a mysterious call from an old friend, Tasha. Tasha, as it turns out, has gone missing.
Trying not to give away the ending, it didn't go exactly where I thought it was going. I expected Tasha's issues would help put Sophie's into perspective, looking not as serious in comparison. Instead, Tasha's escape gives Sophie motivation. It's an interesting, tiny twist that speaks of individual levels of tolerance and inspiration.
Set up with tones of a mystery, I'm not sure that the story works entirely in that vein. It's resolved too fast and too tied too much to Charlie's inside knowledge to give this reader any sense of co-solving the crime as I've come to expect from such stories, but it's an entertaining Christmas story and the more I think about it, the more provocative I think it is.
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