It took a while, but I’ve read the next book in the Freida Klein series. Almost a year ago, I finished Tuesday’s Gone and decided that I was liking the series and wanted to read more.

Following the days of the week, Waiting for Wednesday has Freida on the precipice of collapse. Hal Bradshaw has replaced her as advisor to the police and he seems obsessed with humiliating her. Freida is still physically recovering from the events of Tuesday’s Gone. And now, there are missing girls, the murder of a seemingly perfect wife, and a strange story about cutting a father’s hair and enjoying the power that the scissors gave.

It is, as you can imagine, a lot. Nicci French does tie it together in an exciting way, but it was a journey to get there. And honestly, the journey felt a bit too long for me – sometime around the middle, I was checking to see when the book was going to be finished. I think part of the problem is that Freida isn’t working on the case with Karlsson, and she’s also not directly involved in the case of the missing girls, so there were three separate stories at one point and the book felt like it was starting to drag. That said, the ending goes a long way to making up for the middle section; it was so exciting I had problems putting it down.

As usual, Freida was a fascinating character. She seems to be on the edge of coming undone, and I was actually pretty worried about her for a good part of the book. She’s still good at what she does, and I enjoyed seeing her interact with her friends, but I really wonder how long she can go without breaking down. I do enjoy the fact that she pretty much ignores Hal Bradshaw: he treats her as an enemy while she can barely treat him as a priority; it was as though he was obsessed with her (love and hate being two sides of the same coin and all that) but she truly was indifferent to him.

Overall, this was a great novel. While I think the pacing could have been better, I enjoyed both the mysteries and the characters. I’m definitely keen on continuing the series and since the books are out, I think I better get to it sooner rather than later because I found that I’ve already forgotten quite a bit.