Originally published: 22 October 2020 (eBook) ; 19 November 2020 (Paperback)

Author: Marianne Holmes

Published by: Agora Books

Genre: Thriller

Page count: 320

Reading dates: 15-18 October 2020

When everything you say is a lie, can you even remember the truth?

Annie lives a quiet, contained, content life. She goes to work. She meets a friend. She’s kind of in a relationship. She’s happy. Not lonely at all.

Except none of this is true and as a reader we can almost immediately see that Annie is not in a good place. As the book opens, she has been packed off home by her boss Paul after getting drunk at a work networking event. She decides to let herself into his flat, ends up falling asleep in his bed and then accidentally taking a small figurine when she has to leave quickly as he returns.

When the next day, 12 year old Chloe Hills is discovered missing, CCTV shows Annie’s car at the train station and it appears Annie may have been the last person to see her, although she actually has no recollection of this. Curious about her disappearance, she ends up joining the search party and quite enjoys herself, pleased to be part of something. But her behaviour isn’t right; she doesn’t seem able to say the right things and the other members of the other search party are suspicious of her behaviour. And it isn’t long before she becomes a suspect.

This is my second book by Marianne Holmes, having read and very much enjoyed her debut A Little Bird Told Me back in 2018. Holmes writes excellent characters. Told from the point of view of Annie, she thinks she is acting in a normal way. But we as the reader can see that something is not quite right with the way Annie behaves and I loved the way Holmes teases out the details over the course of the book.

The story about the disappearance of Chloe is almost a side story. The story is more about Annie’s behaviour. She can’t remember if she saw Chloe at the train station but she knows she was there so contacts the police anyway so they can eliminate her from their enquiries. But because she is trying to avoid telling them about going to Paul’s flat she ends up getting herself muddled and making herself seem suspicious.

A great thriller with an element of mystery, I really like Holmes’s writing which looks at the dark side of trying to fit in. Annie is not a likeable character but she is a sympathetic one, especially once we learn more about her. An engaging character driven thriller!

Many thanks to Agora Books for sending me a proof copy for the blog tour. You can see what others are saying by checking out these other brilliant bloggers!

About the author:

Marianne Holmes is the author of A Little Bird Told Me , published by Agora Books in 2018. She was born in Cyprus and bounced around the UK, Germany, Kuwait and Belgium with her RAF parents as a child but is now firmly based in London with her own family. She has degrees in Classics (RHUL) and Linguistics (UCL), neither of which got much use while she worked in marketing.

Twitter – https://twitter.com/MarianneHAuthor