YOU TRUSTED YOUR BEST FRIEND . . . YOU SHOULDN’T HAVE.

Vicky Seagrave is blessed: three beautiful children, a successful, doting husband, great friends and a job she loves. She should be perfectly happy.

When she makes a split-second decision that risks everything she holds dear, there’s only person she trusts enough to turn to.

But Vicky is about to learn that one mistake is all it takes; that if you’re careless with those you love, you don’t deserve to keep them . . .

My Review

This is a great debut novel and really had me hooked from the start. It has a basic premise of a mistake made and only one other person knowing the truth. Vicky having made a disastrous decision chooses to confide in someone close.

Vicky on the face of it, has it all, happy marriage, lovely kids and great friends, particularly Amber. Despite that she still seems to “lack” something in her life, and desires to improve her surroundings, if not her life. Vicky is not one for standing still, and aspires to better things. However that results in her making a decision that sparks a chain of events which spirals totally out of control and will alter everything. I feel I should say at this point, she makes several mistakes and on my scale none of them I’d rate as particularly ‘little’. But perhaps the biggest “little” mistake is choosing to confide in the LAST person she should be sharing confidences with. But hindsight is a wonderful thing and we can all be wise after the event.

Vicky’s unfolding drama is alternated with that of 10 year Katya in 1992. Katya has had an unhappy start in life and is currently being fostered. How her story fits into the unfolding 2010 plot line is unclear, but as time goes on gradual clues are revealed but it took me quite a while to start to see who Katya was/is. Once revealed her recent actions start to make sense (albeit in a twisted way). I have no intention of saying anything more on that plotline, you need to uncover that for yourself. I will say though that it had me completely altering my views on characters once all was revealed.  Initially I thought Vicky was naive at best and stupid at worst which meant I had little sympathy. However as the tension ratchets up and one character in particular starts to reveal their true nature I started to switch my allegiance and was definitely team Vicky.

The author presented a believable and thought-provoking scenario to kick off proceedings but that was only the start of the drama. The tension was lurking in the background from the beginning, across both of the time frames and resulted in shocking results that I certainly never anticipated. I’m not always comfortable with psychological thrillers but I’m happy to say this one had me totally gripped, albeit with a sense of mounting horror and several shout out “no! don’t do it” moments. This is a very accomplished debut and I’ll certainly be looking out for future books by this author.

I received a copy of this book from the publisher to enable this honest.