Tag: thrillers

Don’t close your eyes…

When Jake Meredith is arrested for the murder of his wife, he’s adamant he isn’t guilty, even though her blood is all over his hands and his prints are on the murder weapon. He has no memory of attacking her.

His solicitor brother claims Jake is a sleepwalker, and he is sent to a revolutionary new sleep clinic for assessment.

Jake is convinced he didn’t kill his wife, and is intent on finding answers. But locked away in a clinic, he’s impeded at every turn. Is his incarceration accidental, or part of a larger web of lies? And worse
still, is he losing his mind or the unwitting victim of something far more sinister?
All he knows is there’s something going on in the room with the red door…

A dark and twisty psychological thriller that’ll have you guessing right up until the end, perfect for fans of Freida McFadden, The Silent Patient and Anna O.

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M. A. Hunter is the alter ego of Stephen Edger, the bestselling author of psychological and crime thrillers, including the Kate Matthews series. Living in Southampton, he uses his insider knowledge to deliver realistic and unsettling suspense on every page. M.A. enjoys reading anything that will keep
him awake at night and is a passionate advocate for contemporary cinema.

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My thoughts: Jake is admitted to a sleep clinic on Lundy Island off the coast of Devon, he’s been accused of killing his wife, something he can’t remember, and according to his brother he might have been sleepwalking.

As the assessment begins he starts to lose time, his memory seems to be getting worse and the other patients unnerve him. Worse still he’s dreaming about his experiences in the army, terrible nightmares that might be PTSD.

It all gets a bit Shutter Island, things are much stranger than Jake first thinks, and his fractured reality is more complicated than he remembers.

Full of twists and turns, this is a compelling and clever thriller.

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

We all have that friend – the one who doesn’t quite belong. Dinah Marshall is that person and knows it. After someone drops out, she’s invited to spend the weekend at a luxury holiday home with women she’s known since university. However, the gulf between them has widened since then, and Dinah is conscious of being the only one with no money, career, partner or children. Feeling like an outsider, she takes to snooping around the house. She’s fascinated by its owners, Sarah and Isaac Rivers – and when she discovers she can secretly stay an extra night, that fascination quickly spirals into obsession.

When Isaac Rivers meets ‘Diana Malone’ at an exclusive members club, he introduces her to his wife and friends, and she’s soon welcomed into the group. She seems to be trying a little too hard, however, and as her somewhat intense behaviour starts to raise both eyebrows and questions, one of her new acquaintances begins to suspect she isn’t who she says she is. For Diana – or is it Dinah? -this is a disaster: she’s worked hard to get where she has, and these suspicions threaten everything. But Diana isn’t the only one with secrets, and if she’s going down, then she might just take everyone else with her . . .

My thoughts: Dinah is very strange, we all wish we lived different lives, how the other half live etc, but she inveigles her way into Sarah and Isaac’s life, leaving a trail of disruption and chaos. Their friend (frenemy?) Evangeline aka Vanjie, suspects her of being someone she’s not, and is not welcoming, their perfect foursome doesn’t need a fifth wheel. Only it’s not so perfect and Dinah’s intrusion causes the cracks to show and everything starts to crumble.

What she discovers and puts together is shocking, someone in this tight knit group has risked everything to keep things the way they want them and will even stoop to harming the children if they get in their way. For all Dinah’s pretending and slightly creepy behaviour, she’s far from the worst person around.

Tense, clever and a bit disturbing, this is an excellent psychological thriller that takes the whole “grass is greener”, “I’ll have what they’ve got” to extremes. Delicious.

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

Kara knows exactly what she wants to be. A widow.

Kara Bryant is everything Chris Abrams ever wanted. She’s passionate, beautiful, and smart.

She’s also married to his boss.

When millionaire Perry Bryant offers psychologist Chris a position on his healthcare staff it seems the perfect chance for Chris to escape the mistakes of his past and start over.

But then he meets Perry’s wife, Kara. She takes his breath away. It soon becomes clear she wants him just as much as he wants her. And more… much more.

In fact, she wants everything.

Kara asks Chris to help her kill her husband. In spite of himself, Chris can feel himself falling under her spell. It makes him question everything – his friendship with Perry, his loyalty, even his own character.

Until finally he’s faced with the ultimate question – just how far will he go for love?

My thoughts: this was very clever, I really didn’t see the twists and turns coming. Perry just seemed too trusting and naive to be real, and Chris didn’t even seem to really care about betraying him for Kara. Who was a total nightmare. Anyone can get a job, but she’s decided she just wants to have a nice life spending someone else’s money and never work, despite not having any of the issues that Perry deals with in order to be able to make all that money.

But oh, the shock twists, so nicely done, so clever. So yes, read this and while I give nothing away, it’s jaw dropping stuff. Trust me.

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

At last, Malcolm has found the perfect woman. Now he just has to keep her.

Malcolm Todd seems like an average older man – he lives a quiet life in an ordinary bungalow on a suburban street.

But Malcolm is hungry – he’s looking for love.

There was that young woman at work with the lovely hair. That didn’t work out.

And the one who worked at a delicatessen. That ended quite badly.

But now someone very special has come to stay, right here in his own home.

Josie is young, beautiful, spirited. And it’s clear to Malcolm that he and she have a very strong connection. A connection that could lead to a truly delicious future.

Josie might not immediately understand how happy they could be together. But Malcolm is sure he can find ways to persuade her…

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Iain Maitland is the author of three previous psych thrillers, The Scribbler (2020), Mr Todd’s Reckoning (2019) and Sweet William (2017), all published by Contraband, an imprint of Saraband.

Iain is also the author of two memoirs, Dear Michael, Love Dad (Hodder, 2016), a book of letters written to his eldest son who experienced depression and anorexia, and (co-authored with Michael) Out Of The Madhouse (Jessica Kingsley, 2018).

He is also an Ambassador for Stem4, the teenage mental health charity. He talks regularly about mental health issues in schools and colleges and workplaces.

This is Iain’s fifth psychological thriller with Inkubator Books.

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My thoughts: so this was very creepy and with a very unreliable narrator at the helm. Malcolm spends a lot of time hinting at things he thinks his son Adrian has done, but then he starts writing in his journal about the genuinely unpleasant and awful things he’s done himself. At one point, he actually seems to claim driving a man to suicide as a victory in his old job as a tax inspector at HMRC.

He’s an unpleasant and rather nasty man, never at fault, everything that’s gone wrong in his life, the crimes he’s committed, always someone else to blame. Even getting fired after harassing a colleague is not his fault. Then there’s the bodies in the old air raid shelter in the garden…

When his son brings home his girlfriend and her little girl, things get even more sinister, he quickly becomes obsessed with Josie, keen to keep her at his home, for himself, he even plans to get rid of her daughter. Her horrible ex is stalking her, and so she needs to hide out for a bit. His house is perfect for that, even with the police coming round with questions about his missing wife and her lover.

There’s lots of sudden twists, Malcolm is one of the most unpleasant protagonists I’ve read in a while, and his mood can change suddenly and violently. He’s not even honest in his own head. But it is gripping and clever and the end twist was worth it.

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