ramblingmads

Secrets can be kept. If you’re willing to pay the price.

Anne Marie’s life isn’t easy. She’s a single mom in a dead-end waitressing job with a beater car and bills to pay. Adding to the pressure, her teenage son, Dave, is out of control, and no matter what she does, Anne Marie can’t seem to get through to him.

Then, out of the blue, Dave completely changes. He’s kind, he’s thoughtful, he helps out around the house and looks after his mom. Anne Marie can’t believe her luck.

Until she discovers the reason for her son’s sudden transformation – he’s done something really awful and he’s terrified he’ll be caught. Even worse, someone out there knows about it and they’re blackmailing him.

Anne Marie is desperate to protect her son and knows she has to somehow stop the blackmailer. But how?

As she considers her choices, Anne Marie realizes she may be taking the first steps on a path that will lead her straight to the gates of hell.

How far is she willing to go to save her only child?

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Emily Shiner always dreamed of becoming an author but first served her time as a banker and a teacher. After a lifetime of devouring stacks of thrillers, she decided to try her hand at writing them herself. Now she gets to live out her dream of writing novels and sharing her stories with people around the world. She lives in the Appalachian Mountains and loves hiking with her husband, daughter, and their two dogs.

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My thoughts: Anne Marie is trying to keep all the plates spinning – her dead end waitressing job, her struggle to pay the bills, her son Dave, who’s getting into trouble at school. But after a hit and run on their street, Dave changes for the better. Can it last and does he have anything to do with the death of their elderly neighbour?

When he finally opens up to her, it’s with the horrifying news that he did indeed hit their neighbour and somebody saw – now they’re blackmailing him. He needs his mother’s help to get the blackmailer off his back. And from there it all spirals out of control.

Anne Marie no longer has any control of what’s going on, and increasingly her son, who’s not a particularly nice person, is and he doesn’t care who he has to hurt to get his own way.

There are twists and turns along the way, as Anne Marie’s life falls apart, all the things she’s scrabbling to hold onto are escaping her and she’s on her own with no one to turn to. I felt sorry for her, she’s lost in her own life and nothing seems to be improving. Even when she tries to take back control it goes wrong. The final twist was gasp worthy, but no spoilers here.

*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in the blog tour but all opinions remain my own.

“Gone. They’re gone.” Dylan’s wide-eyed mother bites her nails in desperation. “All three kids. They wanted to sleep outside. But I went to check this morning and… the tents are empty. They’re gone.”

Twenty-five years ago: teenage Leah had a sleepover with her three best friends. By morning, the other girls were missing. This small town has been searching for answers ever since. Now it’s happened again…

Three boys decide to camp in a field next to one of their homes. When dawn comes, dew glistens on their empty tents.

Overgrown farmland is searched. Three distraught families are desperate for news. A mother herself now, Leah’s heart breaks as terrible memories flood back…

Leah thought she knew what happened at the sleepover years ago but now another three children are missing. What if she was wrong? And how far will Leah have to go, to finally discover the truth, before it’s too late?

A completely addictive psychological thriller packed with twists, that will have you up all night racing through the pages. After the Sleepover can be enjoyed as a standalone read, and anyone who loves Shari Lapena, Lisa Jewell, or The Perfect Marriage won’t be able to put it down.

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Kerry Wilkinson is from the English county of Somerset but has spent far too long living in the north. It’s there that he’s picked up possibly made-up regional words like ‘barm’ and ‘ginnel’. He pretends to know what they mean.

He’s also been busy since turning thirty: his Jessica Daniel crime series has sold more than a million copies in the UK; he has written a fantasy-adventure trilogy for young adults; a second crime series featuring private investigator Andrew Hunter and the standalone thriller, Down Among The Dead Men.

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My thoughts: Leah is only finally coming to terms with the secrets she learnt about her own friends’ disappearance when the mother of a teenage boy the same age as her son asks for her help. She was at school with Leah and now she’s living every mother’s nightmare – her son and his friends have disappeared…or have they?

Leah is uncomfortable supporting Jennifer, a woman she barely knows, but does it anyway, she’s a good person and feels sorry for her.

However when Jennifer’s son reappears, minus his friends, with a weird story about being kidnapped by a man who threatened to kill them “like those girls”, with what Leah knows, something isn’t quite right.

Turning to her dad, despite him being the last person alive she would normally contact, Leah does some digging. And actual bones are found on Jennifer’s land too. Something very strange is going on.

Shocking, twisting and full of gasp out loud moments, this is a great follow up to The Night of the Sleepover although you don’t have to have read it to enjoy this. Leah is a wonderful protagonist, willing to help people but not gullible or naive enough to fall for everything people say. Putting her amateur detective skills to work preventing a sort of copycat from getting away with it pushes her to reconsider how she’s seen by the people in her home town.

*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in the blog tour but all opinions remain my own.