Psychological Thriller

All posts in the Psychological Thriller category

The Liar’s Room – Simon Lelic

Published August 22, 2018 by bibliobeth

What’s it all about?:

ONE ROOM. TWO LIARS. NO WAY OUT…

Susanna Fenton has a secret. Fourteen years ago she left her identity behind, reinventing herself as a counsellor and starting a new life. It was the only way to keep her daughter safe.

But everything changes when Adam Geraghty walks into her office. She’s never met this young man before – so why does she feel like she knows him?

Then Adam starts to tell her about a girl. A girl he wants to hurt.

And Susanna realises she was wrong.
She doesn’t know him.
BUT HE KNOWS HER.
AND THE GIRL HE PLANS TO HURT IS HER DAUGHTER…

The addictive new thriller with an ending you’ll never guess, The Liar’s Room is perfect for readers of Shari Lapena’s The Couple Next Door and A J Finn’s The Woman in the Window.

SIMON LELIC – THRILLERS TO KEEP YOU UP ALL NIGHT.

What did I think?:

Simon Lelic is a relatively new author to me but as I thoroughly enjoyed The House, his previous novel when I read it last year, I was excited to read this one, particularly when I read that thrilling synopsis. I adore a good thriller as I’ve mentioned in previous posts and I don’t think you can beat that feeling of not knowing what’s going on, being constantly surprised and delighted by twists and turns and constantly feeling compelled to keep turning those pages. That’s what The Liar’s Room felt like for me, especially in the beginning when I kept bothering my sister, Chrissi Reads via text, saying that I didn’t have a clue what was happening but that I LOVED it. As you can imagine with a novel billed as a psychological thriller, it’s a bit messed up and we’re not aware of the motives of our characters until we’re a fair way through the narrative but add in a couple of unreliable narrators and for me personally, the story just exploded into the stratosphere!

Simon Lelic, author of The Liar’s Room.

As with all reviews of thrillers, I really can’t tell you too much about the plot for fear of spoilers. Believe me, you’re not going to want me to ruin this story for you. What can I tell you? The majority of the novel is set in a counsellor’s office, the counsellor is Susanna Fenton and she has her first appointment with new client Adam Geraghty. She immediately notices that Adam appears on edge but she never could have dreamed or anticipated what he starts to tell her i.e. the reasons behind his visit and indeed, what ends up transpiring in their session over the next couple of hours. You see, Susanna has secrets of her own, secrets that Adam is well aware of and with a tag line like ONE ROOM, TWO LIARS, NO WAY OUT, you wonder if either party is going to leave the room unscathed, if at all.

With Simon Lelic’s writing, I’ve grown to expect the unexpected and I love the unpredictability of the narrative that I can never fully figure out, including exactly what direction he’s going to choose to take both his characters and plot. Both characters are unreliable as I’ve mentioned, and we’re knowledgeable about the fact that they are both liars but that’s the only small juicy piece of information we’re given on entering the counselling room with both Adam and Susanna. Of course this makes them infinitely more interesting as individuals – why are they lying for example? What information does Adam have that seems to give him such a hold over Susanna and, even more intriguingly, why exactly does he care so much?

All these questions are answered eventually but it’s the journey to get to these answers that makes it one hundred percent worth the wait. I was completely captivated by Lelic’s writing style, the intricacy of his plot and the mystery that underpins why Susanna and Adam are in this room, talking to each other in the first place. He’s not afraid to go to some dark places, has the imagination to construct a brilliantly realised narrative which kept me hooked, wanting to read just one more chapter throughout the entirety of the novel.

Would I recommend it?:

But of course!

Star rating (out of 5):

four-stars_0

Blog Tour – Do No Harm by L V Hay

Published July 18, 2018 by bibliobeth

What’s it all about?:

Till death do us part…

After leaving her marriage to jealous, possessive oncologist Maxwell, Lily and her six-year-old son have a second chance at happiness with headteacher Sebastian. Kind but vulnerable, Sebastian is the polar opposite of Maxwell, and the perfect match for Lily. After a whirlwind romance, they marry, and that’s when things start to go wrong…
Maxwell returns to the scene, determined to win back his family, and events soon spiral out of control. Lily and Sebastian find themselves not only fighting for their relationship, but also their lives…
Chilling, dark and terrifying, Do No Harm is a taut psychological thriller and a study of obsession, from one of the most exciting new voices in crime fiction.

What did I think?:

First of all, thank you so much to Anne Cater for inviting me to take part in this blog tour and to the always fabulous Orenda Books for providing me with a copy of Do No Harm in exchange for an honest review. I’m adoring the new wave of psychological/domestic thrillers that are coming out at the moment and although sometimes I worry that they’re going to be too similar, so far I haven’t found any yet that aren’t both unique and thrilling reads. This is definitely the case with Do No Harm, it has so much to recommend it – a compelling, twisty plot, fascinating and very readable characters and of course, those unexpected moments (I call them “gasp out louds”) that cement the book in your memory and make it more likely you’ll remember the story months down the line.

L V Hay, author of Do No Harm.

This is the story of a marriage, as you might have guessed. Actually, hang on a second, this is the story of TWO marriages. We have our main female lead, Lily and her new husband Sebastian who have recently married and are attempting to achieve full wedded bliss but are being hampered slightly (understatement of the year!) by the spectre of Lily’s previous marriage with ex-husband, the very intense Maxwell. Lily and Maxwell both share a son and although they share custody fairly amicably, the boy becomes a perfect pawn for both finding out what is going on in the newlyweds’ household and manipulating that situation for some other, more venomous motives. Lily and Sebastian are desperate to enjoy their new life as man and wife and Sebastian, to forge a relationship with his stepson but it’s not long before the cracks start to show and the family are at breaking point. However, what they don’t realise is exactly how out of hand and dangerous their lives are about to get.

Do No Harm is a gripping tale where you really never know what’s coming next. I’ve read so many novels in this genre and I can’t help myself trying to predict what’s going to happen but with this novel? I failed miserably. I kept thinking I had figured it all out and feeling quite smug and clever then my bubble was well and truly burst when L V Hay pulled that metaphorical rug right out from under me and completely twisted everything round beyond all recognition. I thought it was going to be obvious. It’s not obvious. I thought it was going to be predictable. Nope, definitely not predictable. I love when an author surprises me and refuses to submit to a cliché and Do No Harm does this time and time again. I’ve also had the misfortune to be in an obsessive, negative and manipulative relationship and the author describes the uncomfortable, confusing nature of this perfectly. Expect the unexpected with this exciting novel and just enjoy being taken along for a ride where ANYTHING could happen.

Would I recommend it?:

But of course!

Star rating (out of 5):

four-stars_0

AUTHOR INFORMATION

L. V. Hay is a novelist, script editor, blogger, and head reader for the London Screenwriters’ Festival. She is the author of Writing & Selling Drama Screenplays and the thriller The Other Twin.

Check out L V Hay’s website HERE

Thank you once again to Anne Cater and Orenda Books for inviting me to take part in this blog tour, I’ve had a wonderful time doing it. Do No Harm was published on the 30th June 2018 and is available as a paperback and an e-book. If you fancy some more information don’t forget to check out the rest of the stops on this blog tour for some amazing reviews!

Link to Do No Harm on Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/39215628-do-no-harm

Link to Do No Harm on Amazon UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Do-No-Harm-L-Hay-ebook/dp/B079YWK3GK/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1531663434&sr=8-1&keywords=do+no+harm+lv+hay

Behind Closed Doors – B.A. Paris

Published July 9, 2018 by bibliobeth

What’s it all about?:

Everyone knows a couple like Jack and Grace: he has looks and wealth, she has charm and elegance. You’d like to get to know Grace better. But it’s difficult, because you realize Jack and Grace are never apart. Some might call this true love.

Picture this: a dinner party at their perfect home, the conversation and wine flowing. They appear to be in their element while entertaining. And Grace’s friends are eager to reciprocate with lunch the following week. Grace wants to go, but knows she never will. Her friends call—so why doesn’t Grace ever answer the phone? And how can she cook such elaborate meals but remain so slim?

And why are there bars on one of the bedroom windows?

The perfect marriage? Or the perfect lie?

What did I think?:

My sister, Chrissi Reads has been begging me to read this book for a while and it just kept getting forgotten in my huge TBR pile. Until now. I decided to put it on my Chrissi Cupboard TBR for June and now I’ve finally got round to reading it, I can see where she was coming from. This is a debut novel from the author, B.A. Paris but is so thrillingly accomplished that it stands up there with the best authors in the genre writing right now. I was slightly concerned when I read the synopsis that it would be another one of *those* psychological thrillers where we can easily predict what’s going to happen but luckily I was completely wrong and the twists and turns blew my misgivings out of the water.

B.A. Paris, author of Behind Closed Doors.

As with so many books where giving you too much information would be major spoiler territory, I’m not going to say anything else about the synopsis rather than direct you to the brief summary above taken from Goodreads. I didn’t want to know ANYTHING about this novel going in and I’m so relieved I managed to avoid any reveals because it works so much better as a psychological thriller when the reader has the joy of the element of surprise. This was certainly true for this reader. I didn’t know what on earth was going on when I first met Jack and Grace and as usual, I tried to analyse and predict their relationship and behaviour patterns. Of course, I was both taken aback and delighted when I was mistaken on so many levels but most of all, I adored the depths of darkness, disbelief and pure horror that I was taken to throughout the narrative through the actions of some of the characters.

Gorgeous Thailand, where Grace and Jack spend their honeymoon and where the first of many secrets are slowly revealed.

There seem to be a sheer exodus of books out there at the moment that talk about the “perfect” marriage, ever since the huge success of Gone Girl. I’ve read quite a few and enjoyed the majority of them but do start to worry that the trope is being flogged a bit too much. It’s only when I read something like Behind Closed Doors that I realise that there are fresh, unique ways to tell the story of an *interesting* relationship without resorting to the same old tactics that we’ve read about before. I don’t think you’re ever going to be able to prepare yourself for a novel like this, it plunges into some very desperate, mind-boggling areas, explores the more troubling parts of the human psyche and keeps you questioning motives and back stories of particular characters. It’s a compelling page-turner that is considerably difficult to read in places and will have you thinking about THAT ending long after finishing.

Would I recommend it?:

But of course!

Star rating (out of 5):

four-stars_0

Behind Closed Doors by B.A. Paris was the thirty-seventh book in my quest to conquer Mount Everest in the Mount TBR Challenge 2018!

Blog Tour – Come A Little Closer by Rachel Abbott

Published February 18, 2018 by bibliobeth

What’s it all about?:

They will be coming soon. They come every night.

Snow is falling softly as a young woman takes her last breath.

Fifteen miles away, two women sit silently in a dark kitchen. They don’t speak, because there is nothing left to be said.

Another woman boards a plane to escape the man who is trying to steal her life. But she will have to return, sooner or later.

These strangers have one thing in common. They each made one bad choice – and now they have no choices left. Soon they won’t be strangers, they’ll be family…

When DCI Tom Douglas is called to the cold, lonely scene of a suspicious death, he is baffled. Who is she? Where did she come from? How did she get there?

How many more must die? Who is controlling them, and how can they be stopped?

What did I think?:

First of all, thank you so much to Maura Wilding and all at Black Dot Publishers for getting in touch and asking me if I’d like to read a copy of the latest Rachel Abbott thriller in exchange for an honest review. Now I have to be honest, I hesitated a little bit initially. I’m a bit of a stickler for reading things in order and (confession time), I haven’t read a single one of Rachel Abbott’s novels before. However, I have read many, many good things from my fellow bloggers about the other books in the series so I threw my normal caution to the wind and thought I’d give it a go. I’m so glad I did as Come A Little Closer is a gripping, thought-provoking read that can easily be read as a stand-alone and at no time at all did I feel I had missed out too many crucial parts of the back stories of our returning characters.

I mean, who could resist wanting to try this book after reading that thrilling synopsis? It begins, as the synopsis suggest with two women sitting in a kitchen in complete silence and another woman who has made a very bad decision on a night out just before she is due to get married. Who are these women and how do they connect to the narrative? All will become clear, but the suspense was already needle sharp and I loved the whole mystery behind these intriguing women. Then we meet our main character, Callie who is attempting to escape a miserable relationship by going on a cruise. She meets an elderly lady whilst on holiday (and a rather intense young man) the former of whom provides an emotional crutch on which she can lean on and spout all her worries about the relationship she has with her horribly leech-like, very persistent and stubborn boyfriend.

Sooner or later however, Callie is forced to return to reality and face her demons, including her boyfriend. What she isn’t expecting is for her life to take such an unexpected and dangerous turn that has her questioning everything, including her own sanity. Combined with all of this, as if this wasn’t enough drama, we have DCI Tom Douglas who is investigating a strange murder of a woman found in the snow and they are unsure whether she took her own life or there are suspicious circumstances involved. When tenuous connections are found to another historical death, Tom must discover what on earth is happening to these women and all these other links in the narrative start to make a horrific kind of sense.

I didn’t mean to make my explanation of the novel so long but honestly, there is so much that could be said about it! From the very first page, you start to understand that you are dealing with a very convoluted story, involving multiple characters with potentially, numerous twists and turns to be had. Essentially, this is exactly what I got from Come A Little Closer. It’s thrilling, occasionally shocking and definitely difficult to stop reading once you get started. I became quite invested in the characters, particularly Callie who I found myself hugely frustrated with at points and terribly sorry for at other times. Sometimes she can be very naive and there were times when I just wanted to shake her and open her eyes as to what was going on or push that little bit of courage into her so that she could finally break away from her situation. As the reader, you kind of know what’s going on pretty early in the novel, but that’s no bad thing – what we really want to know as we absorb the tale is WHY? Of course, Rachel Abbott writes a fascinating enough plot to keep you guessing and surprise you in equal terms by the time you get to the grand finale.

Would I recommend it?:

But of course!

Star rating (out of 5):

3-5-stars

AUTHOR INFORMATION

Rachel Abbott, born and raised in Manchester, founded her own interactive media company in the 1980s, before selling it and retiring in 2005. She then moved to Italy where she worked on the renovation of a 15th century Italian monastery, and it was here that, one day, she found herself snowed in and decided to begin writing for pleasure.

This became her debut novel Only The Innocent, which she went on to publish via Kindle Direct Publishing, topping their chart for 4 weeks.

A true self-publishing pioneer, Come a Little Closer is Abbott’s seventh novel. All of her previous thrillers have hit no.1 in the Kindle charts. She splits her time between Alderney in the Channel Islands and Italy.

Find Rachel on Goodreads at: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5349971.Rachel_Abbott

on Twitter at: @RachelAbbott

on her website at: http://www.rachel-abbott.com

Thank you once again to Maura Wilding and Black Dot Publishers for inviting me to take part in this blog tour, I’ve had a wonderful time doing it. Come A Little Closer was published on the 15th February 2018 and is available from all good bookshops now. If you want some more fantastic reviews don’t forget to check out my fellow bloggers stops for some more fantastic reviews!

Link to book on Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/37969850-come-a-little-closer?ac=1&from_search=true

Amazon UK link: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Come-Little-Closer-Rachel-Abbott-ebook/dp/B079GYCX7R/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1518971261&sr=8-1&keywords=come+a+little+closer+rachel+abbott

Broken River – J. Robert Lennon

Published February 6, 2018 by bibliobeth

What’s it all about?:

A modest house in upstate New York. One in the morning. Three people—a couple and their child—hurry out the door, but it’s too late for them. As the virtuosic and terrifying opening scene of Broken River unfolds, a spectral presence seems to be watching with cold and mysterious interest. Soon the house lies abandoned, and years later a new family moves in.

Karl, Eleanor, and their daughter, Irina, arrive from New York City in the wake of Karl’s infidelity to start anew. Karl tries to stabilize his flailing art career. Eleanor, a successful commercial novelist, eagerly pivots in a new creative direction. Meanwhile, twelve-year-old Irina becomes obsessed with the brutal murders that occurred in the house years earlier. And, secretly, so does her mother. As the ensemble cast grows to include Louis, a hapless salesman in a carpet warehouse who is haunted by his past, and Sam, a young woman newly reunited with her jailbird brother, the seemingly unrelated crime that opened the story becomes ominously relevant.

Hovering over all this activity looms a gradually awakening narrative consciousness that watches these characters lie to themselves and each other, unleashing forces that none of them could have anticipated and that put them in mortal danger. Broken River is a cinematic, darkly comic, and sui generis psychological thriller that could only have been written by J. Robert Lennon.

What did I think?:

I have to admit, I’ve never heard of Broken River or the author, J. Robert Lennon before so I was delighted when it was the first book from my Daunt Books Annual Subscription that my lovely boyfriend gifted me for Christmas last year. I have made it my mission to read and review each book I receive as part of my Bookish Goals/Resolutions which I posted about in January. I’m always slightly concerned about a book subscription as I have a LOT of unread books on my shelves and I always worry that a book is going to be picked for me that I already own. Well, not only did I not already own Broken River but as I mentioned, I hadn’t even picked up on it being published so I was very excited to check out what it was all about.

It’s clearly a crying shame that I didn’t know about this book as it is a wonderful novel that is written in quite a literary style (i.e. gorgeous!) but has that edge of thriller that keeps you gripped, turning the pages quicker than you might do a “normal” literary novel. In fact, when I first started reading it, I was pretty determined that it was going to be a five star read for me. Unfortunately, I had a minor issue that stopped me from giving it the big five but I still insist that this is a fantastic book that needs to be read by more people.

Broken River is initially the story of a family – Mum, Dad and a young daughter who get into a horrific situation where the parents are killed, inches away from their surviving daughter. The perps responsible for the brutal murders are never found and brought to justice. After the daughter is taken into care, the house becomes abandoned, gathering dust, rodents and other house guests, including your typical teenagers who use it as “party central” and the homeless and drug addicts where it becomes a convenient place to sleep/get high.

This is until a new family moves into the house: Karl, Eleanor and teenage daughter Irina, all of whom have their own issues and deep, dark secrets. As we follow their story, we also learn how they all deceive each other, for one reason or another and witness the struggles of their relationships, particularly when an obsession develops with the murky history of the family that came before them and Irina’s insistence that she has found the previous daughter who saw her parents being murdered in such a terrible way. Of course, this news doesn’t stay quiet for long and the family find themselves embroiled in a now very deadly situation when some people think the secrets and crimes of the past should remain buried.

There’s so many things to love about this book, particularly the writing style and most definitely, the variety of intriguing characters that the author develops beautifully. They’re all flawed in some way, particularly the villains of the piece (of course!) and especially the father, Karl whose little ways and the mistakes he makes, potentially hurting his family forever, really got under my skin and made me cross but I literally loved to hate him. Yes I might have made a little huff of anger at him during several parts of the narrative but who hasn’t groaned at a nasty character that you can’t stand in a novel? For me, that just means that J. Robert Lennon has done his job properly and written people that I can either really connect with i.e. Eleanor, Irina or others that I just want to throw in a river.

Additionally, I thought it was fantastic that he gives some of his more villainous characters quite a human edge and you can really see their regrets about what they might have done in their past and the sticky situation that they feel they can’t run away from in the present time. Personally, there were only a tiny, minuscule part of this novel that I didn’t quite connect with and stopped me from giving it five stars. There were a few chapters interspersed between the main narrative from the point of view of The Observer. He/she watches certain events as if he is with the character at the time and gives a whole new perspective of their actions. Now I really enjoyed this at the beginning and thought it was quite frankly, a genius move by the author. However, the chapters nearer the end starting getting a bit too philosophical for my liking and sadly, it didn’t evoke the same emotions in me as it did at the beginning. Apart from this, I would urge anyone with an interest in literary fiction and crime to try this book, it might just surprise you. It definitely surprised me.

Would I recommend it?:

But of course!

Star rating (out of 5):

four-stars_0

18 Books I’d Like To Read In 2018

Published February 2, 2018 by bibliobeth

Hi everyone and welcome to a bit of a different post on my blog. I’ve already made some Bookish Goals/Resolutions for the year but I also made a little promise to myself that I would do a random post every month that I have been inspired to participate in from seeing it either on booktube or from a fellow blogger. A lot of the booktubers that I follow have been posting videos about 18 books they would like to read in 2018 and I thought I’d join in with the fun. So, without any further ado, here are the 18 books I’d like to get to this year!

1.) Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte