Woohoo! My awesome ‘lil possum, Claire Knight, is kicking off the weekend here on #CrimeBookJunkie with a fantastic review for one of my faves….Mel Sherratt and The Girls Next Door! You can catch my review here.
https://crimebookjunkie.co.uk/2016/10/the-girls-next-door-review/
Right, time to see what my guest reviewer has to say about this book! Over to you, Claire!
Synopsis:
One warm spring evening, five teenagers meet in a local park. Only four will come out alive.
Six months after the stabbing of sixteen-year-old Deanna Barker, someone is coming after the teenagers of Stockleigh, as a spate of vicious assaults rocks this small community. Revenge for Deanna? Or something more?
Detective Eden Berrisford is locked into a race against time to catch the twisted individual behind the attacks – but when her own niece, Jess Mountford, goes missing, the case gets personal.
Claire’s Rating: 4/5
Claire’s Review:
I was feeling like I was heading for a slump, nothing on my kindle was taking my fancy before I even opened the book and read a chapter! Real life has a lot to answer for when it wants attention. What I needed was something I knew I would enjoy and having seen the recent blog tour sentiments, I had a feeling The Girls Next Door would sort me out!
Eden is little firecracker of a detective and love her!! She lives and polices the area she and her family reside. She’s got connections in the community either through her daughter or through her sister. She cares about the community she lives in. She doesn’t always do things by the book but then again what (fictional) police officer does?
I had my suspicions as to who was our nasty culprit! But as always, I was led up the garden path and got it wrong!
I love Mel Sherratt’s writing, gritty drama, grown up chick lit (as Marcie Steele) and the genre I first discovered her under, crime thrillers. The Girls Next Door is definitely a gritty crime thriller, with a smidgen of romance, only a smidgen mind you! Mel has managed to draw on all her other books to produce this dark novel.
I loved seeing the references to The Mitchell Estate, tying into the author’s successful Estate series. Just to complete things, I would love to see Eden cross paths with Mel’s other detective, the tenacious Allie Shenton! Hint hint Mel ? I was very excited to see the recent cover reveal for the second outing for Eden “Don’t Look Behind You“. Can’t wait to read more from this new detective!
Massive thank you to Bookouture for my copy of The Girls Next Door. Looking forward to book 2 already!
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Thrilled to see that Mel has helped with bringing back Claire’s mojo! If you are looking for a new series with an interesting police female lead, then pop over to amazon via the link below and check out #DSEdenBerrisford!
[amazon template=iframe image&asin=B01M02NTYA]
Clearly you haven’t been paying attention, Scottydog….I am a HUGE fan of Mel’s, too! You MUST read her books.
Nice one, Claire. Caroline Mitchell is a big Mel fan . . . might have to give her a go.