[Synopsis]
Margot Lewis is the agony aunt for The Cambridge Examiner. Her advice column, Dear Amy, gets all kinds of letters – but none like the one she’s just received:
“Dear Amy,
I don’t know where I am. I’ve been kidnapped and am being held prisoner by a strange man. I’m afraid he’ll kill me.
Please help me soon,
Bethan Avery”Bethan Avery has been missing for years. This is surely some cruel hoax. But, as more letters arrive, they contain information that was never made public. How is this happening? Answering this question will cost Margot everything…
[My Review]
With missing people, suspicious characters and psychological thrills, Dear Amy looked right up my street, and I’d been looking forward to reading it for a while.
The book features intriguing characters which are crafted well by author Helen Callaghan, and the pace moves quickly along and includes plenty of action without being too over the top. The first half of the novel completely hooked me in – I couldn’t stop reading and really devoured it! I really liked agony aunt Margot, the main character, and really felt for her at various points in the story, plus I really liked the premise of the story – an agony aunt getting letter that seemed to relate to a missing person case from years ago.
However as the story continued it started getting a little silly – even for this genre. I lost interest a little bit as, though there are plenty of twists, most are quite easy to guess and (especially as the novel went on) seemed a little far fetched and unbelievable (yes, even for this genre!).
I wish the story had included a bit more about why certain things had happened to certain characters (trying to avoid any spoilers), but overall this was still a really entertaining thriller that I enjoyed reading.
I have read similar reviews about this book and it’s a pity because it looked awesome. I don’t think I’ll read this one ????
It is a shame – a really good idea but didn’t hugely impress me. Still pretty entertaining though overall!
I’ve read that one thing that struck a blogger was that the column used letters in the 21st century! 🙂 I’ve seen mixed reviews about it, it’s a shame I had great expectations for this story, but now I don’t know if I should get it.
I had too! I think perhaps I had a bit too high expectations, and it sounded like a great concept – which it is! – but maybe it just fell slightly flat for me. Plus there’s been so many amazing thrillers in this kind of genre so far this year – the bar is set high! Definitely still worth a read though I think, if only for the first half of the story which was really entertaining!
I’ll keep it in my wish list then 🙂
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