'Every Move' Every #3 by Ellie Marney

 Received from the Publisher 

From the BLURB:

The sequel to Every Breath and Every Word.

After the dramatic events of London, a road trip back to her old home in Five Mile sounds good (in theory) to Rachel Watts, with her brother Mike in the driving seat. But when Mike picks up his old buddy – the wildly unreliable Harris Derwent – things start to go south. Back in Melbourne, Rachel’s ‘partner in crime’, James Mycroft, clashes with Harris, and then a series of murders suggest that the mysterious Mr Wild – Mycroft’s own personal Moriarty – is hot on their tail. When tragedy strikes, Rachel and Mycroft realise they’ll have to recruit Harris and take matters into their own hands…

‘Every Move’ is the third and final book in Ellie Marney’s ‘Every’ mystery YA series.

I didn’t want to read this book – not because I wasn’t excited for it, and I certainly wanted to catch up with James Mycroft again … No, I didn’t want to read this book because I knew it was the last we’d be reading of Mycroft and Rachel Watts, and I didn’t want their adventures to end. But, it was Arthur Conan Doyle who wrote; 'What object is served by this circle of misery and violence and fear? It must tend to some end, or else our universe is ruled by chance, which is unthinkable.' And I suppose after all that Mycroft and Watts have been through in this series, they deserve a rest now, huh?

Certainly, ‘Every Move’ is set deep in the aftermath of second book ‘Every Word’, and the horrifying London events that see Watts and Mycroft now distant and uncommunicative. Rachel in particular is suffering post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in the form of nightmares, sleepless nights and a new, frightening awareness of the world around her and the danger she and Mycroft have found themselves in. Adding to Rachel’s woes are the fallout from her London trip with her family – her mother in particular is expressing her fear for Rachel’s safety through anger and hurt, not entirely without justification … but it’s taken so much of a toll on Rachel, that her brother Mike drives them out of the city and back to their country home in Five Mile for a reprieve.

It is while home in Five Mile that Rachel and Mike catch up with one of his old friends, one Harris Derwent whom Rachel describes as; ‘sun-bleached, Driza-Bone-wearing, dickhead, tearaway.’ Harris wants to follow in the Watts’ footsteps and get out of Five Mile, so Mike offers him a lift into the city and their spare couch to crash on, much to Rachel’s dismay.

Meanwhile, Mycroft is following new leads, based on evidence gathered while in London – these threads will take him dangerously close to finding out who killed his parents, and why – but at what cost to him and Rachel?

I’ve got to say, this book is high-adrenaline and high-emotion. There’s a lot that needs hashing out – particularly between Watts and Mycroft, Rachel and her family – and while no stone is left unturned, Marney isn’t afraid to break reader’s hearts and leave them gasping with every page-turn. I don’t feel like I can say a hell of a lot about the nuts and bolts of the story, except the pacing is exquisite and the whodunit marvellous … the end will leave your heart racing and mind reeling.

But onto the really good stuff that drove this series – the characters – and I’m thrilled to say that Watts and Mycroft don’t disappoint. The characters we first met back in 2013 feel like they’ve come full-circle in this finale, and Marney really does give them room to shine and reflect on their past adventures and ramifications of those adventures. I particularly appreciated that Rachel is given time to grapple with her PTSD following the events of London, and Marney really does explore it with infinite patience and compassion. 

Mycroft and Watts’ romance has always been such a tender counterpoint to the oftentimes brutal crime-thriller aspect of the series, and I was delighted to find that their last dance is a damn good one for the emotional outpourings;

 ‘Covalent bonds are a type of molecular bond formed by the sharing of a pair of electrons between adjacent atoms,’ I recite. 

‘Yes! Covalent bonds are about the strongest molecular bonds in biochemistry, right? So you’ve got this molecule, it’s very strongly bonded ….’ 

Mycroft is close enough now that I can feel the warmth of him through his white shirt. He slips one of his hands into one of mine, and holds our joined hands high. Our fingers twine together, and some of the heat in his palm radiates out into my body. My stomach starts to do gravity-defying things again, and my cheeks flame. 

His voice has gone low. ‘But then the molecule comes into interaction with other molecules, where it can be affected by something called dispersion forces …’ 

‘Dispersion forces. Uh-huh.’ My heart is hammering. 

‘… also called London forces.’ 

‘You’re shitting me.’

And while this was an end, there was one new addition to ‘Every Move’ that bought a surprising freshness to the finale – in the form of new character Harris Derwent. He’s a tough bloke on the outside, but with an all-too believable back-story that had me thoroughly in his corner. And while he is coming to this series literally at the eleventh hour, I couldn’t help but feel like we haven’t seen the last of him either … at least I hope so.

I’ve loved this series from the start, and I’m so happy to see that it’s gone on to enjoy great success overseas. It introduced us to a fantastic new voice in Aussie YA, and even though I’m sad to see the last of Watts and (especially that delicious) Mycroft, I can’t wait to see what else Ellie Marney has in store for us.

While this series started out as the perfect read for fans of Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes, it quickly became a must-read in its own right as a gutsy and exhilarating crime-thriller for readers young and old.

5/5