Helen Callaghan

“You have to run with all your might, just to stand still.”
― Helen Callaghan, Dear Amy

I did not love this.

Dear Amy was a book with quite an interesting premise. But I just could not get involved in it. Ultimately what I did was resort to skimming and cheating by reading the ending.

It is a big book..not huge..but long enough and I read a few other reviews which really say what I felt so not alot to add. I did not feel connected to the story either and I did not like the "twists". I felt what this story becomes is not quite as advertised.

SPOILERS:

It is taking me alot not to talk about the twists here. It seems, with contemporary thrillers, they all must end with a twist. In the case of Dear Amy it did not work for me because the whole thing becomes more of one woman's soul searching (with a little romance thrown in) and I had thought I was getting a really dark edgy nail biting thriller. So I was let down.

This is not a bad book or anything like that. But it was not the book I expected going in and although the writing was quite good, in the sense that I did want to know the ending, I could not build that connection to the story where I am furiously turning pages, staying up all night to get to the end. It was not anything like that.

I will say though that the book cover is among the best I have ever seen..… (mer)

An unusual and very well-written story (I'll forgive the 'was stood' and 'was sat' (grrr!!) and random use of Americanisms in an otherwise very British thriller), this was an enthralling, compelling book. It didn't quite have me guessing until the end, but although I connected all the dots beforehand, there was enough to make me wonder if I had got it right after all.

It's a story about cults and how devastating, manipulative and endangering they can be to the innocents on whom cult members prey. Callaghan really did her homework to bring credibility to the story and characters.

Sophie leaves her ordinary country-style upbringing to be a city dweller and worker, while her parents carry on with their modest, uneventful lives running a farm café. So when she visits them one weekend and finds her mother noosed and hanging from a tree and her father seriously injured, she finds it hard to accept the police's verdict of a murder suicide. As information about her mother and her life gradually comes to light, she discovers a past she would never in a thousand years have attributed to her quiet and accepting mum.

The tension and addictiveness builds gradually to classy unputdownable thriller.

More of this author to be read most definitely!… (mer)

Although I read it quite quickly, I didn't really lose myself in Dear Amy as much as I expected. I didn't really feel any emotions for any of the characters, not even missing girls Bethan Avery or Katie Browne. I thought the story itself was a good enough idea but it was just too easy to guess the outcome, even for me who doesn't usually see most things coming. I do, however, have to give Helen Callaghan special kudos for making me gasp out loud towards the end of the book when I drew in my breath as fast as the gunshot I had just heard in my head.

Margot Lewis is a teacher at a local school when one of her pupils, Katie Browne, goes missing. Everyone thinks Katie ran away so the police aren't really looking that hard for her. Margot, in the form of Amy, agony aunt of the local newspaper, then starts to receive letters from Bethan Avery, a girl who was kidnapped twenty years ago and never found. Could Bethan still be alive? Is her case linked to Katie's? Margot, however, has problems of her own - she's going through a messy divorce and popping sleeping pills like smarties. Will Katie be found before Margot unravels?

Dear Amy is a fast-paced thriller with a few shocks and surprises that really did make me gasp out loud. Although it never quite caught me within its grasp, it was an enjoyable, albeit slightly predictable, read.

I received this e-book from the publisher, Penguin, via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.… (mer)