When Amelia relocated to Cambridge for love, she never imagined her new life would become a nightmare.
After uprooting her beauty therapy business to be with her fiancé Noah, Amelia receives the first message—anonymous, threatening, impossible to ignore.
As more sinister messages follow, Amelia's new life begins to fall apart. It seems someone is watching her every move and now her clients are abandoning her for no reason she can see. It’s as if she’s done something wrong, but what?
And Noah is no help. He seems strangely distant, then conveniently vanishes to care for his sick father. Alone and terrified, Amelia suspects everyone.
Then, when a photo arrives which proves she's being stalked, Amelia realizes she’s not being paranoid - the danger is very real.
Trapped in her flat, jumping at shadows, Amelia must uncover who's tormenting her—and why. Because in this game of psychological warfare, the people closest to her might be the most dangerous of all.
Trust no one. Question everything. Survive.
This book was like an accident on the interstate. You know it’s wrong to stare, but you just can’t look away. I kept turning the pages, not because I was invested, but because I needed to see just how far off the rails things were going to go.
To begin with, neither of the main characters were remotely likeable to me. Yes, Noah has been through trauma, and yes, Amelia is dealing with a stalker, so I can understand why they’re both on edge. But their actions go so far beyond reasonable that I spent most of the book blinking in disbelief. If Noah is going to lie to his wife about why he’s staying with his parents, wouldn’t it make sense to tell his parents the cover story so they don’t accidentally blow it? And while we’re on the topic, shouldn’t Amelia have called her in-laws long before she finally did? She is going to be part of the family, after all. Granted, I may be biased here because I had a great relationship with mine, but still. Basic courtesy isn’t that hard, especially in the face of a supposed family emergency.
While we are on the subject of all the secrets and lies… my goodness. The sheer number of red herrings piled on top of everything else was exhausting. I get that Amelia didn’t know who was behind the strange things happening around her, but she jumped from suspect to suspect more often than some people change their underwear. After a while it stopped feeling suspenseful and just became irritating. Then we get to the big reveal, which was ridiculous for more reasons than I can list without spoiling it. I will say this, though: I have absolutely no idea what is supposed to be so irresistibly appealing about Noah that it would trigger the chain of events we’re given. I kept waiting for an explanation that would make it make sense, but no such luck.
Finally, I have to mention the two glaring instances where I feel as though the author didn't do any research into their subject matter.
First up, we have the "accident". Amelia is rear ended at a red light. Apparently hard enough to have her airbag deploy, even though air bags don't typically deploy when a person is rear-ended. I mean it works out because her car gets towed to the garage and all you ever know after that is she didn't call her insurance company, and the bumper is the only thing that needs to be replaced.
Then we have the door chain scene. Either door chains work very differently in the UK, or the author didn’t bother researching them at all. Most door chains only open far enough to peek outside, less than an inch, not several inches. There is absolutely no way someone could open one wide enough to toss a tear gas grenade through it. Those things are roughly 52 mm to 80 mm (or about 2 to 3.1 inches) wide and 137 mm to 150 mm (about 5.4 to 5.9 inches) long. So unless this character had magical shrinking grenades, reality simply wasn’t on their side.
And yet I kept reading. However, by the end, I was left shaking my head, wondering how something could be this chaotic and still somehow keep me reading. But like that accident on the interstate… once you’ve seen it, you can’t quite look away.
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