Category: Suspense

Categories
Suspense Thrillers

Her One Mistake by Heidi Perks

Title: Her One Mistake

Author: Heidi Perks

Publisher: Gallery Books

Release Date: 1-8-2019

Rating: 5 stars all day long

Thank you so much to NetGalley and Gallery books for the eARC in exchange for an honest review! If I am being honest – I LOVED and was slightly obsessed with this book. Read on to find out why!

Here is the blurb per NetGalley and Amazon:

What should have been a fun-filled, carefree day takes a tragic turn for the worse for one mother when her best friend’s child goes missing in this suspenseful, compulsively readable, and darkly twisted psychological thriller.

The plot:: I normally put in the whole synopsis but I feel like it is a little bit misleading – it is probably supposed to be! The book started out normally enough but quickly had me entirely hooked, and ended up restoring my faith in thrillers. Long story short: Charlotte and Harriet are best friends, and Harriet trusts Charlotte to take her daughter Alice to the school fair. With three kids of her own to watch, plus Alice, the young girl just vanishes.
Enter a large-scale search, ruined relationships, and one total psycho. As soon as I got my first hunch of who did it, I read the rest in one sitting. Absolutely could not put it down, it just kept getting darker and more exciting as it went.

The style: the point of view switches back and forth between the two main women, moving the story along. It went from the present to the past and back again, painting a larger picture of Harriet and Alice’s lives. I loved the dual POV this time because two totally different stories were being told, and it kept me just itching to find out what happened next.

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The characters: I did like both women and their kids. They are likeable enough and although they stay fairly one dimensional, the unfolding relationships are important and there is good dialogue. I honestly don’t have much to say about the characters, the relationships are well described though and the strain is real. There were a lot of random female names thrown out at first that was a little confusing but did not distract.

General impression: This is such an easy 5 stars. I felt the end coming about three separate times, and wasn’t right any of those times. If I wanted to put it down after about 50%, I couldn’t have. It was truly an exciting and compulsive read, and anyone who likes thrillers and suspense NEEDS to read it. This is a debut novel too and I am so impressed!!

Categories
Fiction General Fiction Suspense

What We Did by Christobel Kent

Title: What We Did

Author: Christobel Kent

Release date: Feb 5th, 2019

(Note: a prior edition is currently available on Amazon)

Rating: 3 stars

First off, a big thank you to NetGalley and the publisher, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, for the eARC in exchange for an honest review!

The summary appears as follows:

Bridget has a secret—one she keeps from everyone, even her husband. One that threatens to explode when her childhood music teacher, Carmichael, walks into her dress shop. With him is a young girl on the cusp of adulthood, fresh-faced and pretty. She reminds Bridget of herself at that age, naïve and vulnerable.

Bridget wants him away—away from her, away from that girl. But Carmichael won’t leave her alone, won’t stop stalking her. And Bridget’s not a little girl anymore. When he pushes her too far, she snaps. But what she thought was a decisive act only unravels more insidious threats—more than she could have ever imagined—and from which no one is safe, not even her family.

The bestselling British author Christobel Kent has written yet another thrilling page-turner with a twisted, riveting conclusion. What We Did is a nightmarish, impossible-to-put-down tale of the secrets we keep from our families, of chilling childhood abuse, and of long-awaited retribution.

Let’s start with the plot! A team of pedophiles is back in Bridget’s life from her childhood, threatening her family and at least one other young girl in the community. Her husband works at the local college with one of the men and becomes unwittingly involved as a journalist nudges him into her search for proof. The book started off predictably with the main pedophile accidentally murdered, but turned into a tangle as the plot wound and unwound with repercussions and events throughout the novel. It kept me interested but also disappointed at times as I felt like more could have happened.

A good example is outside of Carmichael’s house when a man was behind Bridget all of a sudden. It ended up being a benign event but the author makes us wait through another point of view chapter before revealing what had happened, and here I was thinking that she was going to get either abducted or rescued from another pedophile! This happened more than once. The transitions between past and present were confusing at times too, I understand that was how Bridget’s mind flashed back and forth but sometimes I didn’t know what was happening and had to read the page again. Overall though it kept me engaged through the novel.

That covers the writing style as well. As far as the characters: I ended up liking Gill a lot more than I thought I would, although I found myself skimming her point of view chapters. Her life didn’t interest me at all and she just seemed to add length to the book. Finn and Laura are the innocent characters that drive home the point that abuse can appear in all forms, to anyone. The characters were pretty neutral to me but I ended up feeling bad for most of them. Matt was my favorite, just a guy trying to do the right thing.

Overall I am sticking with 3 stars. I ended up loving how she tied everything together at the end, even if it took a while to get there. It looked like the characters were going to be able to move on and rebuild their lives in a healthier manner. The book was a decent suspense/thriller, and I would recommend to anyone who likes that kind of suspenseful fiction.

Categories
Fiction Mysteries Suspense

Love You Gone by Rona Halsall

Title: Love You Gone

Author: Rona Halsall

Publisher: Bookouture

Rating: 4/5 stars

Thank you to NetGalley and Bookouture for the free eARC in exchange for an honest review!

Here is the description per Amazon:

‘Hello? Police? My husband and our children… they’re gone.’

When Mel arrives at the holiday cottage in the Lake District, she expects to find the heating on and her husband Luke and the two children waiting for her. Maybe a bottle of wine open…

Instead, there is just a note on the side, saying they’ve gone out for a walk.

But they aren’t back several hours later, and Mel knows something is wrong. Really wrong. When a search doesn’t find them, she has to confess to the police that her marriage isn’t all that it seems.
Even if that risks her own secrets being revealed

The plot: See above, then enter the story as told from Mel, then Luke’s point of view. I read the book in two days mainly due to the fact that I couldn’t put it down. There are plenty of plot twists and turns to keep it addictive. First you are pointed in an obvious direction then the secrets start coming out!

The characters: I don’t think Halsall wants you to like any of the characters, although I promise that your initial opinion of them all will change! None particularly stood out to me except for Luke’s parents, who were amazingly receptive to the entire shenanigan and I liked them.

I would 100% recommend this to anyone who likes a good suspense story.  It’s hard to talk about the book too much without giving away hints at spoilers but the entire plot does a 180 from what I originally suspected had happened, and the result was that I couldn’t put it down.  Once the cops get involved and you start hearing Luke’s story, the whole façade starts cracking and I had to fight not to skim to the end just to get the answer sooner!

Thank you again for the eARC and I hope everyone will check the book out for a quick page turner!

Categories
Suspense Thrillers

Review: Follow You Home by Mark Edwards

Hello and welcome to my first review! 100% unsolicited, I obtained this book from Kindle (a new venture for me)!

I really enjoyed this for a few reasons:

1) The book was not predictable. I could not guess what was coming next, and was surprised at least four or five times by plot twists. It kept me engaged and was never boring – In fact I switched it to audio when I couldn’t read so I wouldn’t miss the next chapter.

2) The dialogue was believable and natural between characters. When a large portion of the book is dialogue, I had better feel like I am there among them!

3) The point of view stayed consistent, but hopped around more towards the end. The end felt a little forced but tied the story together nicely, filling in the few missing pieces and tying the story up neatly.

The downside for me as an American reader is that it is hard to be a grammar freak when the UK English dialect is different. A very few passages felt poorly edited but it may simply be the dialect. I did enjoy looking up pictures of places and things that occur in the book though, and even with no understanding of Europe I had no trouble following the story.

Overall, I give it 4/5 stars and recommend Follow You Home to anyone who enjoys a good thriller! Not for the faint of heart or those who are easily offended by language or grisly descriptions of scenes!

Thank you for reading!