Stars: 2.75. Maybe 3. I’m torn ok!
Blurb: A gripping psychological thriller for fans of Gone Girl and The Girl on the Train.
Leah Mills lives a life of a fugitive – kept on the run by one terrible day from her past. It is a lonely life, without a social life or friends until – longing for a connection – she meets Julian. For the first time she dares to believe she can live a normal life.
Then, on the fourteenth anniversary of that day, she receives a card. Someone knows the truth about what happened. Someone who won’t stop until they’ve destroyed the life Leah has created.
But is Leah all she seems? Or does she deserve everything she gets?
Everyone has secrets. But some are deadly.
What is it about: Leah is in hiding – well, sort of. She’s living her life consumed by the guilt of a horrific event in her past that she has never been able to get over. She lies to her co-workers, to her boss retreating within in herself in shame for her past sins. Until, just as she starts to tip-toe back into life, things come crashing down and someone begins to threaten her and reveals her darkest secret to her friends and her boss.
Is it about anything else?: Nope.
Is it worth your time: I’m torn. There are positive aspects here – Croft is an atmospheric writer, and as the chapters progress the tension starts to increase and you can feel Leah’s confusion. But there’s a really big BUT…
A few atmospheric chapters doesn’t make up for a weak middle and ending. Croft seems to be a writer that relies on twists to make her book stand out, but there’s much to be desired in this story.
Leah is a cautious, introverted woman who works in a library and keeps to herself. It’s how she copes with a trauma from her past and it’s part fear and part atonement on her part, I think. When the book begins, she’s taking her first tentative steps into venturing out of this cocoon, and trying online dating. There she meets Julian, and behind the safety of her keyboard she lets herself be drawn out into the world again. However, someone starts sending her emails revealing they know who she is and what she’s done and slowly but surely they start destroying her life. Leah begins her own investigation into her stalker in an effort to stop them before things get out of hand.
Alternate chapters however begin to tell the story of how she got to this point – a prisoner of her past, in essence. Slowly but surely, Croft draws a picture of a carefree and in love Leah at 16, without a care in the world. She has best friends, she falls in love and experiences all the things teenagers should, including heartbreak. All of this leads up to this event that shaped her life in so many ways, and that’s saved for the very end of the book.
These two timelines contrast who Leah is with who she was powerfully. Readers will be left with no doubt that only something devastating could have changed her as much. Croft also shows the effects of this event on the other people in her life and her town, emphasising how far-reaching the consequences of this event were.
Which is all well and good, but the story for me hinges on believing Leah – cautious, cautious Leah who has retreated from the world and trusts no one… would trust an individual she doesn’t really know. I don’t find that action plausible at all and I don’t understand it. The story crumbles from there, limping through chapter after chapter as Leah investigates who is after her.
The pacing of the big moments in the book was particularly bad. I have no other word for it. Clumping your big reveals at the end robbed much of the book of its tension for me. Had Croft paced them out better, using one to amp up the danger Leah is in before the last reveal, this book as a whole might’ve worked better.
As it stands right now, it relies too much on twists to be an engaging read. What do you think of this book?
