Who Did You Tell? by Lesley Kara
Genre: Women’s Fiction/Mystery & Suspense
Published: January 2020, Bantam Books (Penguin Random UK)
Swathi’s Rating: 4/5
About the Book:
Every town has its secrets. Lesley Kara knows them all . . .
From the author of 2019’s biggest crime thriller debut, The Rumour, comes an addictive new novel . . .
It’s been 192 days, seven hours and fifteen minutes since her last drink. Now Astrid is trying to turn her life around.
Having reluctantly moved back in with her mother, in a quiet seaside town away from the temptations and painful memories of her life before, Astrid is focusing on her recovery. She’s going to meetings. Confessing her misdeeds. Making amends to those she’s wronged.
But someone knows exactly what Astrid is running from. And they won’t stop until she learns that some mistakes can’t be corrected.
Some mistakes, you have to pay for . . .
Swathi’s Thoughts:
Set in the small sleepy town of Flinstead (Same town as The Rumor), the story follows Astrid, a recovering alcoholic who is staying with her mom after a tragic loss and a secret that she is trying very hard to forget. She attends AA meetings in the town, and it’s not easy mingling with the others in the group. She feels awkward and uncomfortable and it takes so long to get herself a friend there.
Meanwhile she meets Josh one day at the beach, who is easy going and nothing like her ex-boyfriend. Immediately drawn into him, she decides to help his father with a painting in their gorgeous bungalow. Using her skills and training as a professional set designer, she considers this as a distraction she very much needed!
Things are better, until one day she gets an envelope with the photo of her ex-boyfriend and a sticker of a woman’s bloodstained hands in the back of it. Who would have sent her this? What kind of a sick person does something so terrible to haunt another person? Should she be terrified or is it just a nasty prank? But the most important question is, who knows her most darkest secret?
If you’d read Lesley Kara’s first book The Rumor, you’d know how brilliant she describes the town of sleepy little Flinstead and it’s people. The gloomy yet pretty beach town is the perfect atmosphere for her books and I was very surprised to see it in ‘Who did you tell?’ as well. I loved reading The Rumor last year and has never found an equivalent book yet. So you must imagine the level of curiosity and excitement I had for her second novel. I got to admit, this book is completely different and not something I expected from the Blurb. Although I totally enjoyed the suspense that was building up right from the page 1 and the narrative adding mystery to the story. I just couldn’t put the book down without finding out Astrid’s secret because it was kept so much of a mystery and not revealed until very late in the book. That’s how good Lesley is when she has to prolong her surprise element without boring her audience! A small town mystery where she makes you suspect every single character you meet, giving them the starry eyes, and walking down the roads with the fear of someone following you! That’s why you’ll have to pick up her books without a second thought.
Many, many thanks to Alison Barrow from Penguin Random UK for my proof copy. All opinions are solely mine and are no way biased.
Meet the Author:
Lesley Kara is an alumna of the Faber Academy ‘Writing a Novel’ course. She completed an English degree and PGCE at Greenwich University, having previously worked as a nurse and a secretary, and then became a lecturer and manager in Further Education. She lives on the North Essex coast.
Her debut novel The Rumour is a Sunday Times hardback and paperback bestseller and 2019’s bestselling print crime and thriller debut.
Her second novel, Who Did you Tell? is coming soon.
