Tired and irritable from her cross continental flight from the UK, the last straw for Cara Burrows is being sent to the wrong room in the middle of the night by hotel reception. Disturbing a teenager and a man in the room, the over reaction is completely bizarre to Cara but in the light of day, it becomes just one of those things. The purpose of Cara’s trip was to regroup her thoughts and have a well-deserved break from her insufferable family so beyond that, she’d rather just enjoy what the Arizona resort has to offer. Cara has big mental fish to fry.

The disappearance of Melody Chapa ten years ago was one of those cases that gripped the public. Though Melody’s body was never recovered, her parents are in prison serving time for her murder and the case remained in the public eye thanks to occasional ‘sightings’ and sporadic media attention. Overhearing another hotel goer claim a number of recent sightings of Melody, Cara has cause to examine again her memories of that first night in the hotel. Could that have been Melody, hiding in plain sight?

There’s both highs and dips with this novel. Some of the dialogue is quite fun and the main character Cara is comically harried with all that is going on in her life. We’ve all been there. Mother and teen daughter relationships based on sarcasm are very relatable, as is the faux cheeriness you often encounter from hotel staff when all you want to do is be left alone to enjoy your holiday. Author Sophie Hannah contrives to balance all of the mayhem of hotel goers joining forces for a holiday adventure with the darker depiction of a child’s murder.

As the abduction/murder plot is rather over worked, you will need to check your reality radar (and eyerolling) at the door in order to complete this read. As a beach towel novel, DID YOU SEE MELODY may have served a little better. As a crime novel, it’s a little oddball. It needs a little more darkness, or a little more lightness to slide home successfully in either category. Whether you are new to this author of an existing fan you will appreciate how Hannah has brought together a lot of diverse characters and made them interact in the unlikely environment of a high end desert resort.

Shades of “It’s a Mad, Mad World” for sure, but in the hands of Hannah DID YOU SEE MELODY has enough intrigue (satisfactorily largely in the hands of the women) to push (rather than sweep away) the reader through what is essentially a one location mystery. It’s a bit of frenetic trip in order to answer the burning question of the novel - did Cara really see Melody at the Swallowtail Resort?

This book has two titles. In America it’s been released as Keep Her Safe, and in the rest of the world Did You See Melody? This seems apt really. Because this book certainly has a split personality. (I’ll say I’m not rapt on either title, but the cover of Did You See Melody? has more appeal than the other.)

I loved the start. It was incredibly well written and descriptive and I quickly came to understand why so many people recommend Sophie Hannah novels. She builds some wonderful tension for our heroine, Cara, a Brit who has travelled to Arizona to stay in a fancy resort. Arriving late at night, Cara is given a key to a room which, she soon finds out, is already occupied. There is no problem with this initially, but after a few odd comments from fellow guests, Cara starts to suspect the child in the room is Melody Chapra, a young girl everyone believes was murdered by her parents years previous.

As I said, there’s some wonderful tension here at the beginning (I especially liked the note in the grotto moment) but then Hannah’s story starts to go astray…

One specific issue I have early on is that Cara isn’t familiar with Melody Chapra or the case. Apparently everyone in America has read and heard every last piece of juicy detail, but the media hasn’t replayed any of this in England. This is ridiculous. No one outside Europe knows anything about Madeleine McCann? No one outside of America knows anything about JonBenet Ramsey? If Melody was such a high profile case, Cara would have heard of it.

Hannah uses lots of characters. I didn’t need a flow chart because there was no point. The amount of characters introduced, with lots of description, background and conflict, only to disappear with no resolution, is insane. And most of them were really annoying and even, I'd say, unnecessary (Tarrin Fry and her daughter, Bonnie Juno, Heidi, the freaky woman with the dog etc etc). Out of them all I think I only really liked the detective who comes to the resort to investigate Melody’s sighting. However, he’s completely under-utilised and, as I said, we get no resolution/outcome with regards to his issues (with his partner).

The other thing that Hannah sets up is that Cara is in a foreign country with no contact with the outside world. Cara gives her mobile phone to the airport hire car company to mind for the entire time she’s in America. Her family has no idea where she is. She has no idea who she should trust from the staff and guests at the resort. However, five minutes later, Cara has a courtesy ipad that she uses to google everything she can on Melody plus she can email her family. The whole isolation and/or fish-out-of-water storyline is simply wasted.

The entire idea that Cara watches youtube and interviews surrounding the case does not work at all. As readers we can’t watch, so we get to read long-winded tedious transcripts. It’s incredibly boring. Telling the story via flashbacks would have had to have been better, because there couldn’t be anything worse than how this part reads. It was so awful, I almost gave up on the entire book during these passages.

Luckily, just as I was about to toss it into the ‘did not finish’ pile, we got a little action and a twist that kept me reading until the end.

I didn’t guess the outcome of the crime, but I don’t think anyone could with the information Hannah reveals.

There is the obligatory twist in the end. I was very uncomfortable with it. Freaked me out a little really.

Overall, the book had its moments, but was ultimately disappointing.

3, maybe a 3 1/2 out of 5.