I’m going to be honest here and say that I’m not a major fan of police procedural type books, movies or tv but I’ll always make an exception when several someones tell me I need to pay attention to something and that’s why I decided to read Whispers In The Dark. People on my Twitter feed would not shut up about it and now that I’ve read it I can understand the positive buzz.

Rose is a sniper with a painful past and when the book begins she is in a standoff with an irrational man. The scene is intense and shows Rose is calm, cool and knows what she’s doing but this event is more than it seems. Rose is also more than she seems and soon after finds herself and her family embroiled in a battle for their lives. The stakes are high and the revelations are chilling. You’ll have to read the book to discover them though because I am not a spoiler of books.

The best thing about this story, besides the history and the creep-factor and the ever-lurking dread, were the characters and their very complicated relationships with each other. They’re flawed, realistic, relatable - all of those things, and I really enjoyed reading their stories and reactions to events. Life is often messy, imperfect, frustrating, and disappointing and this book felt real to me because of the character’s interactions with each other and the realism and emotion written into the scenes. I still find it difficult to believe this novel was a debut. That sort of blows my mind.

I’m glad I listened to my horror people and gave this book a chance. I can easily recommend it to anyone looking to escape reality for a while and fall into a tension-filled novel with unforgettable characters.

Dead to Her is Sarah Pinborough’s follow up to her pitch-black perfection of a thriller ‘Behind Her Eyes’. I LOVED that book so much. It was moody and evil and filled with horrible, selfish people doing horrible things to each other. Dead to Her is filled with an equal amount of evil and selfish people too but it took me a long time to warm up to the story because they were all beautiful, wealthy second wives and I was just “eh, who gives a cats bum about these witches and their inner thoughts”. This is where you call me a jerk and I totally agree.

“They were all poison one way or another and maybe she was the only one honest enough to see it.”

But somewhere along the line when the lusty interludes and evil goings-on began, my attention was caught and I couldn’t wait to see the devastation hit them all hard. This is the part where some people might want to tune out but I was there for it. I’m not going to pen a detailed review, this is a lurid thriller and the fun of them should be experienced by the reader and never spoiled beforehand.

This wasn’t a perfect read for me but I enjoyed it once it hooked me and I got over my dislike of the grasping second wife trope. There is a little voodoo, a little passion, a whole helluva lot of betrayal, delectable villains, and some nicely haunting turns of phrase as well as my favorite thing: secrets!

“Even in the sunshine, it seemed ghosts fought for breath.”