Good Evening All,

Another weekend and another fab book to have finished before starting another. I received a copy of Her Name was Rose by Claire Allan from NetGalley in return for an honest review (thank you as always NetGalley). I do have a confession to make in that I had this sitting ready for download for quite some time whilst I tried to keep up with other reading committments, and I regret having left it for so long. It was a really good read and I wish I had read it earlier.

Emily does something that someone does across the world every single day; she lets a stranger with a pram step out of an elevator before her, but that small action of kindness affects the rest of her life. The woman is ploughed down by a car and killed instantly. This touches Emily deeply and she finds herself intrigued by the dead woman’s (Rose) life and makes a decision that sends her on a road she can’t come back from. Rose seems to have had it all, a happy life, a happy child, a happy husband and happy friends. Emily deserves this kind of life too surely? Though it soon becomes clear that not everything is as perfect as it seems. Everyone has secrets.

Once I started this book, I couldn’t stop. I devoured it up as quick as I could. This is definitely a page turner and one of those books where stopping at the end of a chapter is torture. It’s full of twists and turns; some of which I predicted, some that did have me blindsided. There are so many sensitive issues covered in this book (which I won’t go into because I don’t want to give spoilers) that I think it sometimes distracted me from trying to second guess what was coming next…very very clever.

Emily is such a complex character, my feelings towards her changed constantly through the book. She most definitely kept me on my toes. I went from sympathy to pity, back to empathy and then anger. Upon reflection, I was probably a little harsh on her whilst I was reading. I wanted her to “man-up” as the expression goes. Pull herself together an do the right thing.

If you would have asked about a quarter of the way through the book if I could guess the ending of the book, it would have been a wild stab in the dark and I would have gotten it wrong. However as I got closer and closer to the end, there were some definite clues that I picked up on. Though it doesn’t detract away from the reveal, I still gobbled up those words and flicked the pages as quick as I could on my iPad.

If like a whodunnit type story with suspense, twists and turns and some tugs on the heart strings thrown in for good measure, you’ll love this book. I really enjoyed it and I think it came at a good time for me as I haven’t read a thriller or a psychological thriller in quite some time. I will definitely be recommending this book to my pals.

😍😍😍😍😩