16 Jan 2020





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A #1 Book bestseller and featured on Simon Mayo's Radio 2 book club. Perfect for fans of TM Logan's Lies and C.L. Taylor's The Fear.




One simple mouth swab is all it takes. A quick DNA test to find your perfect partner – the one you’re genetically made for.




A decade after scientists discover everyone has a gene they share with just one other person, millions have taken the test, desperate to find true love. Now, five more people meet their Match. But even soul mates have secrets. And some are more shocking – and deadlier – than others...


I was very excited to read this book and it definitely did not disappoint. I really really enjoyed it and told everyone about it to the point where they borrowed a copy just to stop me from yattering on about it. The premise is original and the twists and turns in the book make you change your views of the characters throughout, especially as each chapter ends on a cliffhanger. There were some characters that I disliked at the beginning and didn't look forward to reading their chapters but who became much more interesting as I got further into the book. One friend didn’t like the format of each chapter jumping to a different character but overcame this by reading each character’s chapter separately. It made me really think about the ideas that the book presents such as finding your 'perfect' match from a DNA test and realised that something like this wouldn’t be too far in the future and the ‘picture perfect’ love story that everyone craves and the ‘grass is always greener’ mentality that human nature can’t resist.






Don't Turn Around by Amanda Brooke



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She died.You’re next.


Now he’s coming for you


Ten years ago, Jen’s cousin Meg killed herself after failing to escape an abusive relationship.


Now, Meg’s ex is back and Jen’s domestic abuse helpline has started getting frightening calls from a girl who knows things about Meg – details that only the dead girl or the man who hurt her could have known…


As Jen starts to uncover the past, someone is determined to stop her. Can she save this young woman from Meg’s fate? Or is history about to repeat itself


The book was a real page turner and I couldn't put it down. However, saying that, the book could have been much shorter and one definitely felt very bored in the middle especially as there was so much repetition and description that was unnecessary. The story was believable and engrossing and although the subject matter was so taboo, the author treated it with respect. I definitely didn't guess the twist and the end was satisfactory and didn’t disappoint. I didn't feel any sympathy for the characters and they were not likeable or relatable at all. However, I think that having such strong feelings for the characters makes it more of a good read and of course it makes for better conversation. I found that my sympathies kept changing with the twists in the story so that the characters I was sympathetic towards at the start became less so as I learnt more about them. It took me some time to get used to the story veering from the past to the present and made it harder to keep up with what was going on in the plot and how this has a very popular style of writing nowadays which doesn’t suit everyone.


The cover of the book and the blurb did not reflect the story line at all, however it was attractive enough for me to pick it up from the shelf and want to take it out.