Published by HarperCollins UK, One More Chapter
Publication Date: 6th January 2022
Genre: Mystery & Thriller
Book Description:
Play with fire and you’ll get burned . . .
Who can you trust in this brand new edge-of-your-seat thriller?
A tired old seaside town hiding a series of unsolved arson attacks.
A derelict mansion in the woods with a long-buried secret.
A bundle of old love letters that mask a dark story.
When Jamie's documentary investigation gets too close to uncovering the truth behind a series of deadly arson attacks that tormented Abbeywick in the 1980s, her family might be the ones who pay the price.
But for her younger sister Cleo, the secrets Jamie uncovers have the potential to get exactly what Cleo wants: to remove her mum's toxic new husband from their lives, forever.
All it takes is one spark to send everything up in smoke . . .
My Thoughts:
I chose to read this book as it is a title which caught my eye due to the unusual subject material - you don't tend to come across many novels which feature house fires as their main content. Intrigued, I dived in.
Sisters Jamie and Cleo are adjusting to life with a new stepdad. Cleo has taken an intense dislike to him however being a few years older Jamie is doing her best to accept him into the family - especially as he works in TV presenting and could be a useful contact for Jamie as she strives to become a documentary maker.
Jamie and her boyfriend Spider have plans to make a film about a series of cold case arsons which happened decades before but when the fires start up again things start to take a sinister turn.
Evidence begins to come in which implies the arsonist could be much closer to home than any of them could have known but Jamie gets cold feet when anonymous threats are delivered to her home address warning her to back off. Stepdad Ant is pressuring Jamie's mum to send Cleo away to boarding school to try and calm her down and Spider is wanting to take the documentary in a completely different direction to the original plan. Who wants to take the focus away from the fires as the girls start to dig deeper into the unsolved cases? And why?
I really wanted to be gripped by this story but something was missing somewhere. What it is I still cannot put my finger on. There are red flags galore along the way, a stroppy teenager who will do anything to try and remove her stepdad from her family's lives, hints of domestic abuse and narcissistic behaviour but despite all this sense of mystery and threat I still didn't get hooked in completely.
The writing, characters and plot line are all very good and overall I didn't dislike the book but it just lacked the "X factor" for me.
I wouldn't deter anyone from reading this novel though, I think it must just have been the wrong book at the wrong time for me personally.About the Author:
Rosie Walker is a novelist who lives in Edinburgh with her husband Kevin and their dog Bella. 'Secrets of a Serial Killer' is her debut novel, "an edge-of-your-seat serial killer thriller that you won't be able to put down".
Rosie has a Masters in Creative Writing from the University of Edinburgh and an undergraduate degree in Psychology from Lancaster University.
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