Last Updated on April 22, 2026
I’ve previously read quite a few of the LJ Ross books, namely the DCI Ryan series, but I hadn’t dipped my toe into the Cornwall waters of The Cove until recently.
I was going on holiday and wanted to max out my Kindle Unlimited subscription by downloading as many books as I could, and this caught my attention. Overall, I’m quite pleased that I did.
It’s not a perfect book by any means but it did have enough meat on the bones to keep me occupied poolside.
But before I dive straight in on the overall verdict, let’s take a look at what it is all about…
Gabi Adams
Gabrielle Adams is a young woman living in London with a seemingly perfect life. She works in publishing, has a fiancee, good friends and overall is quite happy with her lot.
At the same time, a serial killer is roaming the streets of the Capital looking for victims to push onto the tracks of London’s Underground rail system with two victims already under his belt.
We meet Gabi at the Christmas works party to which the great and the good of the publishing world have been invited. She expertly networks the room, fends off unwanted attention from a needy writer, and has a bit of a tense conversation with her boyfriend before deciding to make her way home.
Waiting to catch the last tube (train) she is more than aware of the danger posed by the killer who could be lurking anywhere. And then, as the train approaches, she is pushed onto the tracks…
By the way, that is not a spoiler because if she died, the book would end after one chapter!
Nope, somehow Gabi miraculously survives but suffers a brain injury and as a result of the assault a myriad of other issues including memory loss, agoraphobia and a generally fear of life itself.
Months pass, and having lost her job, she decides to get her life together and gets a job running a bookshop in rural Cornwall.
It’s a busy but isolated tourist spot called The Cove and, with only about six other people living nearby.
As she starts to get her life together, she then witnesses a murder and finds herself in the crosshairs of yet another killer.
Is she losing her mind, or is somebody really out to get her…
The Verdict
The single biggest problem with The Cove, and there are a few, is that the book is incredibly short by today’s standards. That means little room for character development and a really quick ending where time jumps ahead weeks at a time.
I was left scratching my head, thinking I’d accidentally skipped a couple of chapters, but no, it’s bam bam bam bam with the revelations, which are fired out so quickly that you barely have time to register them.
The Cove is also an incredibly predictable book. From the get-go, you absolutely know that she will be pushed onto the tracks with two or three suspects already lined up from the beginning.
You know her boyfriend is a jerk, her friends may not be as real as she thought, and she’ll fall for the new guy she meets.
Disappointedly, it’s like painting by numbers for books and I really wished we knew more about Gabi besides her mental health issues which form the central gaslighting plot of the book.
She is a little two-dimensional, which is a real shame. That said, this is the first in a four-book series, so I am tempted to give the second one a go if only to see how Gabi evolves. Watch this space…
Can You Guess Killer?
This is a two-fold answer because two crimes have been committed.
The first is when Gabi is pushed onto the tracks, and you absolutely know it’s not the serial killer guy, so you have to figure out who from her life would want her dead.
The second crime is the murder she witnesses and her attempts to identify the victim.
Neither was particularly obvious but that was due to a lack of information and clues along the way.
They were simply revealed for reasons that were never really covered in the book so no playing along with this one I’m afraid!
None of that is to say the book isn’t worth reading and LJ Ross is a terrific author, it’s just that this specific book didn’t grab me the way others have recently.
