BLURB:

A life built on lies – now the truth could destroy her

Frankie Turner knows what it’s like to be unwanted; she was brought up in care. Now as a social worker to kids in the same system, she’s someone who understands … But Frankie is hiding an unthinkable secret: one that may have its roots in the murder of a young, beautiful woman fifteen years ago.

Yet the past is out there. Someone knows what Frankie is hiding – and now they’re back to shatter her perfectly constructed life, terrorising her with menacing letters and silent calls to the house she shares with husband Alex.

She may have reinvented herself, but Frankie’s past is back to haunt her – and now, there’s nowhere to run.

A gripping psychological thriller that will have you hooked. Fans of Lisa Jewell and Erin Kelly won’t be able to put this one down.

MY THOUGHTS:

Thanks to NetGalley and Hera Books for letting me read this book prior to its publication. My opinion is 100% honest, unbiased, and my own.

I really liked this book, but what I thought was going to be an extraordinary story ended up being just an “oh, wow, that was surprising” kind of story. My main problem was that this book rambles a lot and it gets repetitive. However, it gets much better again when it approaches the ending.

So Frankie grew up in the care system and now she works with kids in the same situation she was in during her childhood. All of that is great, but it doesn’t have a lot of relevance in the story, despite appearing in the most prominent part of the blurb. We don’t really see her at work, and that’s fine, but I was expecting something different. And Frankie is not entirely honest with her husband Alex, who is also quite a mess, and I spent the whole book wanting to slap him silly. It is impossible to like him. At all. Overall, their relationship didn’t make a lot of sense.

The story is mainly told via flashbacks to the time when Frankie got involved in the death of another girl. What are the chances of a person getting involved with all kinds of psychopaths and messed-up people? Well, it seems that Frankie has a special magnet to get close to that kind of people. I don’t want to spoil anything, so I will be careful here. The way Frankie handled her involvement with the family of the deceased girl is quite disturbing, on both parts. And of course that leads to all sorts of drama and mayhem.

The ending felt a bit rushed, with lots of different things going on. In the end it’s not a matter of who did it, but of who did what. As I said, it was an interesting story and I enjoyed it, but it wasn’t the extraordinary book I was expecting. I would recommend it for a nice weekend in, cozying up with a cup of tea.

So, for all of that, I give this book… 3.5 TEA CUPS!