HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!!!
I’m doing my rewind post tomorrow because frankly I can’t be bothered and I got a fun tour post today, which as a thriller, fits nicely on Halloween. [Today is also its publication day, so yay for that!]
Blurb:
Charlie just wants to be forgotten but everyone else wants to know her story…
The morning after a terrible storm, a woman turns up in a remote Cornish village. She has bought the crumbling cottage that has lain empty for over a decade, and she’s going to make it her home. She calls herself Charlie, but it’s a name she’s only had for a few days. She keeps herself to herself, reluctant to integrate with the locals. Because Charlie has a secret.
Charlie was in prison for providing a false alibi for a murderer. But Lee Fisher wasn’t a murderer to her; he was the man she loved. Convinced of his innocence, Charlie said she was with him the night a young woman was killed. That lie cost her everything.
And now she has the chance to start again. But someone is watching her, waiting for her, wondering if she’s really payed the price for what she did.
Book Information
Publisher: Harvill Secker [Vintage Imprint]
Publication Date: 31, October, 2019
Format: Hardback & eBook
Purchase Link
The ebook will be 99p throughout November!
My Review
Hey all, first off thank you so much to Vintage [and NetGalley] for giving me a copy of the eARC in exchange for my honest opinion as part of the tour.
When they reached out and asked if I wanted to read and review this for a tour, how could I say no? Creepy awesome thriller for a Halloween timed tour? I was all in.
And I have no regrets!
This is as creepy and awesome as the blurb made it sound. You switch around between the cop Naz at the prologue, Charlie in the present, the creepy vigilante justice seeker [super creepy], and Charlie before she was Charlie.
You really do connect with her, I have to say it was a nice change of pace. I tend to be detached from protagonists in Thrillers, especially if they’re not the broody detective that you secretly want to cheer for and cuddle in a blanket.
I still wanted to wrap Charlie in a blanket lol. As you read the book there are certain things that have already been in motion before we were privy to the story or that happened int he past and you read about it and you’re just like ‘nooo don’t do that!’ and I liked the element of going between the past and present but not overlapping almost at all. It’s hard to not overlap too much but Jakeman pulls it off effortlessly.
This book also has the ability to make you pick it up and read it in a sitting, haha I picked it up thinking I would only read a few chapters, bam, I was done and sitting there in slight awe after finishing it.
There were some style elements that happen in all thrillers and personally I LIKE when things can be slightly formulaic so that’s what made it a solid thriller for me.
I can honestly say I’ll pick up another book by Jakeman again…and again after reading ‘Safe House.’
If you’re looking for a thriller with just the right amount of twists and turns and creepiness, I present to you this book. 3.5 Huge cups of coffee from me! Now to read her debut thriller, ‘Sticks and Stones.’
About the Author
JO JAKEMAN was the winner of the Friday Night Live 2016 competition at the York Festival of Writing. Born in Cyprus, she worked for many years in the City of London before moving to Derbyshire with her husband and twin boys. Safe House is her second novel and Sticks and Stones was her debut thriller.
The Caffeinated Reader 