I received this book for free from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.
What You Left Behind by Samantha Hayes
Published by Crown Publishing
Publication Date April 14, 2015
Source: Netgalley
Genres: Mystery
Goodreads
A mesmerizing new thriller from the author of Until You’re Mine
Two years after a terrifying spate of teenage suicides, the remote village of Radcote has just begun to heal. Then a young man is killed in a freak motorcycle accident and a suicide note is found among his belongings. When a second boy is found dead shortly thereafter, the nightmare of repeat suicides once again threatens the community.
Desperate for a vacation, Detective Inspector Lorraine Fisher has just come to Radcote for a stay with her sister, Jo, but the atmosphere of the country house is unusually tense. Freddie, Jo's son, seems troubled and uncommunicative, and Jo is struggling to reach out to him. Meanwhile, Lorraine becomes determined to discover the truth behind these deaths. Are they suicides, or is there something more sinister at work? Finding answers might help Freddie, but they'll also lead to a shocking truth: whatever it is--or whoever it is--that's killing these young people is far more disturbing than she ever could have imagined, and unraveling the secret is just as dangerous as the secret itself.
Wicked, intense, and utterly compulsive, What You Left Behind confirms Samantha Hayes as a top thriller writer.
Fond Of
- I read Until Your Mine by Samantha Hayes last year. I thought it was a great, original thriller and therefore was excited to see a sequel What You Left Behind. What You Left Behind establishes another twisted thriller in the beginnings of a heart-pounding series.
- Samantha Hayes kept me guessing who did it. There were several creepy, weird, it could be them characters and thus keeps you on your toes.
- I really like Lorraine, she seems like an average Josephine and therefore makes the story engaging.
Not Fond Of
- The ending was frenetic like someone with ADHD and found it difficult to concentrate, because of that I’m not sure how I feel about it.
- I wish I could say that all the characters were as well-developed as Lorraine and her sister Jo, but with several of them being twilight zone weird I had a hard time caring about their outcome and despite the fact that some held a noose it was a notch in the knot for me.
Final Thoughts
I didn’t find What You Left Behind as powerful as Until Your Mine. This may be because I didn’t think secondary characters were as well-developed in the sequel. Although, despite its flaws What You Left Behind was a decent second novel to an interesting series and could see myself reading the next installment as Hayes does keep you hanging until the end.
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