Political Thriller, Anyone?: A Review of Ada & Eddie by Barry Harden

Hello, Book Nerds! Welcome back to Reading Has Ruined My Life or welcome if you are new. As always, my name is Hannah and I am your captain on this journey into my bookcases.

Welcome back to Mystery March! It is the final week of this year's Mystery March. I’m so sad to see it end, but I’ve had lots of fun creating content this past month. We’ve ranked fictional detectives, we’ve talked murder mysteries, and we’ve talked the golden age of detective novels just a tad. We’ve had some good times this month. So let’s continue the good vibes with one final review.

Break out those magnifying glasses one last time, Book Nerds!

A huge thank you goes out to Collective Ink and Roundfire Books for sending me today’s book. They aren’t paying me for my review, they just sent me the book for free. Thank you very much for reaching out and offering me a copy, it means a lot to me that someone out there wants to send me books. Thank you so, so much!

And what title was I oh so kindly sent? Well, please give a warm welcome to Ada & Eddie by Barry Harden! Ada & Eddie released March 1, 2025.

Synopsis time now. As always, a spoiler alert is in order. If you’ve read any other review on this site then you’ll know I love to spoil the entirety of the books I read. This is your one and only warning. I also have a content and trigger warning to give before I get to the synopsis. Ada & Eddie has mentions of physical and mental abuse. Please be aware of these topics before hopping into the read. 

One more thing before I get to the synopsis. There are multiple dogs mentioned in this book, and they all die; one suffers a very violent death. I am upset. I am not pleased. If this was any other book, I would be giving it a one-star review over on Goodreads and calling it a day, but as I was sent this read and asked to review it then I must properly review it. Ada & Eddie is on thin ice with me. Now let’s crack in.

Eddie Dew has been without a family since he was a child in England’s foster system. When he was a young kid, he and his brother were separated, and they never saw one another again. Now Eddie is in his 50’s, and he lives and travels the North York Moors. One day he stumbles across the body of a young woman. He has no clue who this woman is or was, but he feels an instant kinship with her.

Instead of going to the police to report finding the corpse of a murder victim, he decides to bury the woman. In doing so he meets Ada Grampe, who nearly kills him for trespassing on her property. She quickly realizes the gravity of the situation. So the cops are called, and as it turns out, Eddie is actually related to the deceased woman; she was his niece!

Things continue to get worse as Eddie learns his long lost brother is dead, he’s now the heir to millions of dollars worth of land that his family has been killed over, and those very killers are now after him. Oh, he’s also dragged poor, sweet Ada into this whole mess, too. What follows is a political thriller full of murder, subterfuge, love, and betrayal.

I did not use this gif a single other time during Mystery March. That feels wrong.

I did not have a fun time with this book. I found this read to be tedious and full of characters I couldn’t differentiate between. Ada & Eddie suffers from Too Many Characters Syndrome made even worse by the fact that most characters are poorly introduced. Aside from the titular characters, I had no idea who anyone else was. The final reveal of the double agent did absolutely nothing for me because I had no idea who they were or what they did at any point in the novel.

I also had no idea what was going on half the time. Mainly because I didn’t know who the characters were, but also because the story moved insanely fast. Events and plot points happen one right after the other without giving the characters, and readers for that matter, the time to breathe and digest what just occurred. I don’t think this is something that I’ve ever said before, but Ada & Eddie has too much going on too fast. It’s incident after incident without worldbuilding or the main characters researching/sleuthing; seriously, the characters outsource all of their research.

I did not like this book, plain and simple, I’m not a fan of this read. Ada & Eddie could have been expanded upon so, so much. The book is only 217 pages long when it easily could have been a 400+ page thriller. The characters, the world, the government secrets, the double agent plotline, the fact that this is a political thriller; it all could, and should, have been expanded upon.

Ada & Eddie has promise. I truly believe that. Ada & Eddie has good bones. The main plot being a family murdered over a parcel of land full of rare minerals and an extremist environmental group fighting back is stellar. The writing itself is poor though and it drags the book down a lot. I would love to see Ada & Eddie reworked, expanded, and made to look like a finished novel and not a first draft.

That brings me to the end of today’s review. Thank you so much for joining me today, Book Nerds, for the end of Mystery March. And thank you once again to Collective Ink and Roundfire Books for sending me a copy of Ada & Eddie. 

With that, I shall bid you all adieu. I will see you all again next week with another new review. If you can’t wait that long then you can always check out my podcast Nothing to See Hear. It stars me and two of my dearest friends as we talk everything and anything. Seriously, we have episodes on Disney, Scooby-Doo, haunted houses, weird moments and people in history, and anything else you can think of.

Until next time, stay safe, wash your hands, and read some good books for me. 

See y'all then, bye!