Review: The Date by Louise Jensen @bookouture

Her Saturday night started normally. Recently separated from her husband, Ali has been persuaded by her friends to go on a date with a new man. She is ready, she is nervous, she is excited. She is about to take a step into her new future.

By Sunday morning, Ali’s life is unrecognisable. She wakes, and she knows that something is wrong. She is home, she is alone, she is hurt and she has no memory of what happened to her.

Worse still, when she looks in the mirror, Ali doesn’t recognise the face staring back at her. She can’t recognise her friends and family. And she can’t recognize the person who is trying to destroy her…

Review

Have you ever read something so dark that still made you so happy? This book made me so happy that I wanted to walk down the street high 5-ing people. The Date by Louise Jensen reminded me why I love this genre so much. I haven’t had much luck with psychological thrillers of late and had even started feeling burnt out.  All that changed when this book came my way.

Ali wakes us after a date with no memory of what happened. Not only has she lost her memory but she is also suffering from face blindness. If you are like me and have never heard of this condition, it basically means that a person doesn’t have the ability to recognize faces. Can you imagine how scary that is? Ali could no longer identify anyone by their face. In addition, she forgot faces even after meeting people. It is evident that something bad happened to her. She had bruises, a damaged car, there was blood and then she started receiving threats. Somebody had done something to Ali and this person wasn’t going to leave her alone. Worse still, she has no idea who it was and what they did to her.

The premise of this book was brilliant. I absolutely couldn’t have guessed what happened to Ali. In addition, her face blindness made her an unreliable narrator. Her memories were all jangled up and she couldn’t even identify the people in her life. The suspense heightened as it became clear that someone was still after her. In addition, there were a few chapters narrated by an mysterious character. They were sinister, dark but captivating. I was going nuts trying to guess what was going on and why.

The Date by Louise Jensen has everything that makes thrillers entertaining. It was so captivating that I ended up reading it in just a day. This book is unpredictable, enthralling and definitely unputdownable. Guys, please read this book. Actually, just read all books by this author! She is brilliant, all her books are amazing and her writing is pure magic!

Cover Reveal: The Date by Louise Jensen @bookouture @Fab_Fiction #TheDate

I still remember when I first read The Sister by Louise Jensen. With her debut novel,  Louise became an auto-buy author for me. I have since read The Gift and The Surrogate and it feels like her writing just keeps getting better with each new title. I can’t even pick my favorite of the three books because they are all so amazing!

Today, I am pleased to share with you the cover and blurb for her latest book, The Date.

 

About the book

Something bad has happened to Alison Taylor. 

Her Saturday night started normally. Recently separated from her husband, Ali has been persuaded by her friends to go on a date with a new man. She is ready, she is nervous, she is excited. She is about to take a step into her new future.

By Sunday morning, Ali’s life is unrecognisable. She wakes, and she knows that something is wrong. She is home, she is alone, she is hurt and she has no memory of what happened to her.

Worse still, when she looks in the mirror, Ali doesn’t recognise the face staring back at her. She can’t recognise her friends and family. And she can’t recognise the person who is trying to destroy her…

My Thoughts:

I can’t wait to read this one. I already have so many questions. What happened to Ali? Who is trying to destroy her and why? I have feeling that this will be one addictive, twisty read.I can’t wait to get my hands on it.

The Date by Louise Jensen will be published on June 21st 2018. The book can be

pre-ordered here.

About the author:

Louise is a USA Today Bestselling Author, and lives in Northamptonshire with her husband, children, madcap dog and a rather naughty cat.

Louise’s first two novels, The Sister and The Gift, were both International No.1 Bestsellers, and have been sold for translation to sixteen countries. The Sister was nominated for The Goodreads Awards Debut of 2016. Louise’s third psychological thriller, The Surrogate, is out now.

Louise loves to hear from readers and writers and can be found at www.louisejensen.co.uk, where she regularly blogs flash fiction. She can also be found on twitter and facebook.

 

 

 

Review: The Surrogate by Louise Jensen @bookouture

Kat and her husband Nick have tried everything to become parents, and are on the point of giving up. Then a chance encounter with Kat’s childhood friend Lisa gives Kat and Nick one last chance to achieve their dream.

But Kat and Lisa’s history hides dark secrets.

And there is more to Lisa than meets the eye.

As dangerous cracks start to appear in Kat’s perfect picture of happily-ever-after, she realises that she must face her fear of the past to save her family…

 

 

Review

Happy publication day!

Louise Jensen has become one of my favorite authors. Her previous titles, The Sister and The Gift were both brilliant. In my opinion, The Surrogate is her best book… I have a feeling that I will say the same thing about her next book. Honestly though, her books just keep getting better.

In this story, Kat desperately wants to be a mom. After failed adoption attempts, she decided to try out surrogacy especially when an old friend offered to be the surrogate. It sounds straight forward right? That is what I thought. I read the first chapters with a feeling of foreboding. I kept waiting for something to go wrong. I knew that something would but just didn’t know what and when. However, all my assumptions were dead wrong. There was absolutely nothing that was straightforward in this book. I couldn’t have predicted the twists and turns that came as the story progressed.

The story is narrated through dual timelines and narratives. The then is not only narrated by one person but by two. I kept wondering why the author used two narrators until the connection became apparent. Have you ever shouted at a book? I remember the exact moment when the realization dawned on me and the connection became clear. I was shouting, heart racing, furiously turning pages in disbelief mixed with anticipation. It was a brilliant twist.

Louise Jensen kept the twists coming up to the last page and the ending was so chilling that I had to check and confirm that all my doors and windows were locked before I could sleep. This book has everything that makes a perfect thriller. It has a set of unlikable yet addictive characters. The twists are unpredictable and I just loved how everything came together in an explosive conclusion. The prologue had already set the tone for the book but I couldn’t have guessed the ending. I had to get to the final chapter to understand what the prologue was all about.

The Surrogate by Louise Jensen is a must read for all fans of this genre. If you enjoy a good, thrilling, memorable book with lots of twists, you definitely have to read this one. If you haven’t read of the author’s previous titles, you are missing out on a great reading experience and you should definitely rectify that. Highly recommended!

 

 

Book Review: The Sister by Louise Jensen @littlebookcafe @Fab_fiction @thecrimevault @bookouture

Exciting News!

Today is the day that Louise Jensen’s The Sister is being published in paperback.  It is now out in shops and supermarkets. The Sister will be available in Asda, Sainsbury’s and WH Smith from 24th and in Tesco from September 7th.

I posted my review of The Sister by Louise Jensen a year ago. It was my third ARC and the first one that I gave a 5 stars rating.

I decided to share my review just as it was when I published it a year ago. So here goes…

Synopsis (from goodreads)

Grace hasn’t been the same since the death of her best friend Charlie. She is haunted by Charlie’s words, the last time she saw her, and in a bid for answers, opens an old memory box of Charlie’s. It soon becomes clear there was a lot she didn’t know about her best friend.

When Grace starts a campaign to find Charlie’s father, Anna, a girl claiming to be Charlie’s sister steps forward. For Grace, finding Anna is like finding a new family, and soon Anna has made herself very comfortable in Grace and boyfriend Dan’s home.

But something isn’t right. Things disappear, Dan’s acting strangely and Grace is sure that someone is following her. Is it all in Grace’s mind? Or as she gets closer to discovering the truth about both Charlie and Anna, is Grace in terrible danger?

There was nothing she could have done to save Charlie …or was there?

Review (no spoilers)

Thank you NetGalley and Bookouture for an advance copy of this book.

I have read and reviewed three books so far from NetGalley but this one has to be the best one yet. It is the first ARC that I have given a rating of five stars.

I really liked the balanced,easy pace of this book. I was able to get into the story from the first page. The writing and imagery was also masterfully done. The author effortlessly takes readers right into the middle of the story. The Sister by Louise Jensen is narrated in two main timelines labelled as ‘then’ and ‘now’ and both timelines are narrated in Grace’s voice.

The then tells about Charlie, Dan and Grace’s background and goes all the way up to Grace’s eighteenth birthday when some major events took place. The now takes place years later and start after Charlie’s death. The final chapters focus more on the ‘now’. The two timelines help tie up everything together and made the story more exciting. It was like fitting pieces of a jigsaw puzzle together to get the full picture.

As for the characters, I sympathized with Grace at times. Other times, I wanted to shake to wake her up. She comes off as a really weak character especially at the beginning. However, my thoughts about her changed as the story moved forward and I started to empathize with her. I liked Charlie’s character too. She was portrayed as being strong, loyal,full of life.Basically, the kind of girl who makes the perfect best-friend. I also liked some of the other characters especially Grace’s grandparents, they were so cool and laid-back, just so awesome and supportive.

The Sister by Louise Jensen book is so suspenseful that it kept me turning pages to the end. There are new revelations that occur in each chapter. Events that will keep you wondering what else could possibly go wrong for the protagonist. I love a good suspenseful novel with  drama and this one definitely delivered.

I liked the fact that I wasn’t able to guess how the story would unravel. I thought I knew Charlie’s secret but I was proved wrong. I also thought I had figured out Grace’s first stalker but again I was wrong. Again, I also tried to guess the secret involving Grace’s parents at the start, let us just say, I was wrong each time.Even when I finally managed to figure out the person behind things going wrong for Grace in the now, again another twist occurred that threw everything into a new direction.

This book definitely took me on a roller-coaster ride. It is not your typical whodunit story; it’s the kind of story that will keep you trying to figure out why things were happening as opposed to who is doing them.

Final Thoughts…

I recommend The Sister by Louise Jensen to all fans of psychological thrillers. It’s a story about secrets, deception and lost friendships all masterfully interspersed with suspense that will keep you at the edge of your seat. Seriously, if you like psychological thrillers then you should get this book. I can’t wait to read the next book by Louise Jensen

About the book

• Title: The Sister
• Author: Louise Jensen
• Kindle: 307 pages and 291 on Aldiko
• Published July 7th 2016 by Bookouture
• My Rating: 5 stars