I hated everything about this book. The characters, several generations of an Essex crime family, are all deeply unpleasant and carry out one atrocity after another. They're superficially glossy and care more about flashy cars and designer kitchens than about anything else. They're gangsters who are considered all right as, whatever else they do, they love their old Mum.

Miminka milovala. Byla tak bezmocná a ve všem na vás závisela - bylo to jediné období Reevinho života, kdy si připadala chtěná. Každé z jejich dětí ji dávalo pocit důležitosti, pocit že tady má nějaký účel. A taky ji dávaly pocit úplnosti - jako by v tom chaosu svého života konečně něco udělala správně." The characters of the six children are very well drawn, and they are all very different. The dominant one is Aiden, the eldest, a highly intelligent teenager who adores his mother. Within the local community he is recognised as someone special, and his headmaster is very anxious that he should be put forward for a scholarship to a good senior school. But Aiden himself and the rest of his family are not interested. Aiden's only purpose in life is to make money, lots of it, to support the family. This book is probably the worst book I've ever read. Literally. I read "The Graft" when I was a teenager and I thought it was alright, so when I did a book swap with this book, I thought it would be an easy read, but okay. Like many, many others, I have always been a huge fan of Martina Cole and I used to jump onto her new books as soon as they were released. But again, like many others, I have been left disappointed with her more recent work and I have to say that ‘Get Even’ was no exception to that.” stars. This is the first Martina Cole book I’ve read through a recommendation so not my usual style.Reeva O'Hara has to fight for everything.....she had her first child at 14 and by the time she hits her early twenties she has already produce a further 4 children. Loyalty is everything and even more so when it's family, anything else will be the ultimate betrayal When the bodies of missing schoolgirls start turning up, former DCI Kate Burrows is dragged out of retirement. I am going to admit this: I am in two minds over Betrayal. I enjoyed the story and kept listening to the audiobook, but at the same time, I can't help but think that I had read this story before...

Also, in this book there is an extract from her future book and she clearly writes the word "noice" instead of "noise." Grammar and spelling mistakes in this book made it completely unreadable.I feel annoyed that I wasted my time and money on this apology for crime fiction. Oh the temptation of the station bookshop with a long train journey ahead. One of the initial novels written by Martina Cole was called ‘The Runaway’. It was published in the year 1997 by the Headline publishing house. The plot of the novel revolves around the lives of the main characters Eamonn Docherty and Cathy Connor. In the opening sequence of the novel, the main characters Eamonn Docherty and Cathy Connor are thrown on the streets of London’s sleazy East End and they are left to be on their own. Having grown up as the child of a prostitute, Cathy’s life becomes miserable, which leads to a disturbing ordeal as she does not have any other choice or anywhere else to go. On attempting to run away from her miserable life, she is rescued by Desrae who teaches her how to survive in the society of the criminal underworld. Meanwhile, Eamonn leaves for America along with his father and after some time he becomes one of the deadliest villains of New York. It is believed that when the paths of both of them will cross, they will be a perfect match for each other and it is only a matter of time before this happens. Cathy is beautiful, tough and clever and Eamonn is strong and powerful. Hence, if the two meet they are not going to run away again and will hopefully lead a happy life.

The plot was too simple for a suspense/thriller novel. There were so many little off-shoots that the plot could have taken that would have been mildly interesting and suspenseful. Unfortunately, the author took none of these and we were left with the unfulfilled hope that the story would become complex and live up to what it was marketed as. Character development. Rather than showing how and why her characters change, she just suddenly has them as different people. Now, I realize that she jumps forward in time four times in the book. That does not excuse her from not explaining why Breda suddenly loves her brother more than she loves her own son, especially when she said an irritating number of times previously that her son was the most important person to her and that he "meant the world" to her. She also had this infuriating habit of spending a chapter or two on a character and making that character seem important and then completely dropping said character from the plot never to return with nary an explanation to placate the reader. She lost her most interesting characters this way. Although Cole has never been one to provoke thought, or make my mind surpass its small limits, sometimes a crime novel is something I savour for its simplicity.Got to mention on a lighter note the Mother from hell,Phyllis,is a classic written character, I couldn’t stand her ( the love to hate was strong ) and as for Judy, well you will be shouting at the book about her…. If I had any kind of interest or respect for Cole, I lost it when I saw the blatant mistake early on in the book where a character changes name completely. Like what?

This is probably the worst book I have ever read. The writing was completely awful, there was no character development, and the only suspense and mystery in the whole book was completely predictable by the end of the first 10 chapters (which is not kind of bad, considering it's 156 chapters long and it's marketed as a suspense/thriller novel). I was only thrilled when it was over.

Up to this point I rather liked Aiden. But as the years pass and he becomes a man, gradually he also becomes a monster. His need to control everyone he knows, most of all his family, becomes obsessive. A very wealthy criminal, Eric Palmer, whose fortune has been carved out from prostitution and drug dealing, takes Aiden under his wing and teaches him everything he knows. This is only the second book I have read by this author and already I am a huge fan and want to read more. Her writing is amazing and I am intrigued by what her other work has to offer.