Published By: Bookouture
Pages: 362
Released On: 14/08/2024
His death is reported on the morning news. The man my daughter’s been dating. Dead. Gone…
I blink slowly – once, twice, three times. The hair on the back of my neck rises as I grip my coffee harder. My breath comes in short bursts.
I didn’t even know he existed until recently. Leah doesn’t tell me anything anymore. But I found the letters she hid. I know she fell head over heels for him. That he broke her heart. And that he’s dead now.
I wish more than anything that the news is only shocking because of who it is, and what’s happened to him. But I know my daughter too well for that.
My first mistake was raising my daughter to be just like me. My second mistake might be what I do to protect her…
*****
Thanks to NetGalley and Bookouture for the advanced copy of this title in return for an honest review.
I have been so excited about this book. Natali’s previous thriller, Good Girls Die Last, was so intricate and interesting that I was looking forward to her follow up. Second books are often quite a struggle, and many readers find they don’t live up to the first, but I think this is actually better.
I had just finished an amazing book (A.J West’s The Betrayal of Thomas True if you’re interested), and I was worried that any book I read next would be victim of the book hangover. But then Natali commented on my Tweet about the aforementioned book, and I thought that was a sign that I should read her new one.
It has great storytelling, well-written characters – some “goodies” and some “baddies – but all fabulous creations; it’s fast paced but not rushed, and touches on some difficult conversations.
There are 76 chapters, which I know sounds like a lot but I liked it because they were all relatively short, and I do enjoy a short chapter. It helps add to the choppy thrill of the story.
There is absolutely no hanging about; the first chapter, bam! We’re on the ride!
There’s a number of characters and so I won’t go into them all, but our main ones are Jules and her daughter Leah. We see the whole story through their alternate points of view, and I thought that was a great thing to do. They live their own separate lives but by chopping and changing the POVs, it means we get to see what the other is doing/thinking at the same time, we even get to see their own takes on the same event, which was interesting.
This is a thriller yes, but as well as the traditional thriller elements, there are a lot of other familiar things, such as the fear of your children growing up, your daughter becoming a woman, abuse of power, your children attracting romantic attention, drugs, bad friends, withering relationships etc.
It isn’t a thriller in the sense of car chases and murders and frights. It’s a subtle thrill, a quieter one. Suspect notes, lies, things hiding in plain sight, obsessions, feeling like life is falling about, about missing things, missing people. You know it’s all building up to something major, but it’s a creepiness that gets under your skin and makes you cold, more than one that has you looking over your shoulder. And I thought that way of telling the story really worked in this instance.
It never lost pace. It was slow enough to suck you in, get you familiar with all the characters and emotions and whatnot, but it’s fast enough to provide that thrill and that unsettling, unnerving feeling it gives.
On a side note, I do like it when a book mentions Stevenage. We’re not always talked about in the positive, but this year I’ve read a few books that mention us, which makes me inexplicably happy.
I read it in one day. Once I started it was so hard to stop. I even read it whilst I was watching the Wimbledon and EURO finals, it was that gripping.
Books By Your Bedside 