It’s a pleasure today to be sharing my publication day review of Mine by Kelly Florentia: published by Bloodhound Books, it’s now available both in paperback and for kindle (free via Kindle Unlimited). My thanks to Kelly for providing an advance reading e-copy for review.
I don’t visit the dark side very often these days, but – having read and enjoyed her writing before – I knew I’d be in safe hands with Kelly Florentia. Although this one did look rather darker than the books I’d read from her previously – I’d rather expected a thriller when I picked up No Way Back, but it was more of a grown-up romance and I really enjoyed it (you’ll find my review here). The other book I read from Kelly was The Magic Touch, very much a romantic comedy but with more than a few chills in there too (review here). But there’s no room for doubt this time round – the publishers are calling this one “an absolutely gripping psychological suspense thriller” – so I took a deep breath and dived in…
When you’ve been betrayed, who can you trust?
When loner Lucy Harper accepts a Facebook friend request from Jasmine, an old school friend, the last thing she expects is for Jasmine to run off with her husband, Andrew.
Now, newly divorced, Lucy lives in the flat she still part-owns with Andrew. After a drunken night out, she wakes up with Teddy Fallon. But this is the least of her worries.
The night before a text came through claiming someone knows her secret.
But what is Lucy hiding?
Before Lucy has time to process everything, her ex drops a bombshell – fiancé Jasmine is pregnant, and he wants his share of the money from the flat.
Then the blackmail begins.
Who is after Lucy and why?
Love isn’t always innocent, and Lucy is about to learn a lesson the hard way.
Mine is a nail-biting psychological thriller, packed with suspense. It’s the perfect read for fans of authors like S.E. Lynes, Lisa Jewell and Adele Parks.
Something I always look for in a book – whatever its genre – is characters I can believe in. I don’t really need to like them – and I’ll admit I was a bit ambivalent about Lucy at first, but she very quickly got under my skin. Her life really is such a total train wreck – she drinks far too much, makes so many questionable decisions in her life, swings one way then another – and she soon moves from being someone you watch with horror and detachment to being someone you really care about.
A blind date set up by a friend – and she doesn’t have many of them – brings Teddy into her life. He’s still there, in her flat, the morning after another difficult-to-remember night – but although she kicks against it, he seems intent on becoming a fixture. But her life just gets worse and worse – her ex needs her to sell the flat, there’s a bit of an incident with her best (her only) friend’s husband, and then the blackmail starts. She knows who must be responsible – the friend (her other one…) who stole her husband, and in her usual haphazard way she sets about finding the evidence.
From that point on the pace becomes increasingly frenetic – things go from bad to worse, the situation escalates, and the whole feel of the book changes from suspense to edge-of-the-seat threat and danger. There’s a whole shoal of red herrings, of people and situations not being quite what they appear to be – and just when you think you’ve worked out who the real villain of the piece really is, you doubt yourself within minutes. There’s a brief respite midway, when the pace slows just a little, while Lucy and Teddy debate what to do next – and then it’s off again, with more really dramatic discoveries and developments, and the outcome you might have expected moves away from your grasp once more.
The plotting is very clever indeed – there are so many possible plausible endings, and I’ll admit that the final few revelations took me entirely by surprise. But it’s really not one of those jaw-dropping twists that have something emerging from left field (and that I’m rarely a fan of, if I’m honest) – the pieces just fall into place, and the signs were always there if I’d taken the time to notice them.
I’ll be honest and say that this book isn’t really my usual kind of read, but I thoroughly enjoyed it – despite the fast beating heart at every new crisis and unexpected twist. Psychological thriller books are a crowded market, but I thought this one stood out – the characterisation was excellent, the writing was particularly taut and compelling, and the whole premise of the story was something a little different from the norm. And I enjoyed its sheer breakneck pace – for the most part it provided a real adrenalin rush, but some of the twists and clues got me thinking a bit too while waiting for the next punch to land. Nicely done – however far outside my personal comfort zone, this was a book I really rather enjoyed.
What everyone is saying about Mine:
“If you love a thriller that will make you question everything then check out this new book by Kelly Florentia.”
“It was extremely hard to put down this fast-paced and intense suspense.”
“Dark, twisted and so, so good!”
“This novel had me gripped from beginning to end. It’s fast-paced, twisty and packs a lot of punches”
About the author
Kelly Florentia was born and bred in north London, where she continues to live with her husband Joe, and where her novels The Magic Touch, No Way Back, Her Secret and her latest, Mine, a psychological thriller, are set.
Kelly has always loved writing and was a bit of a poet when she was younger. Before penning her debut, she wrote short stories for women’s magazines – To Tell a Tale or Two is a collection of her short tales. In January 2017, her keen interest in health and fitness led to the release of Smooth Operator – a collection of twenty of her favourite smoothie recipes.
As well as writing, Kelly enjoys reading, running, drinking coffee, gyming, watching TV dramas, and spending way too much time on social media.
Website | Twitter | Facebook | Instagram
