So far in August, I’ve been
incredibly good and stuck to my promise of only reading ARCs sent to me by
publishing houses, and this review is no exception to that rule. In July, I received
an e-galley of Saving Sophie by Sam Carrington from the lovely team at Avon Books. As a self-proclaimed lover
of all things psychological and thrilling, I was looking forward to getting
well and truly stuck into this one as soon as it hit my inbox.
I’m pleased (and pretty
relieved!) to say that it didn’t disappoint in the slightest. The storyline is
pretty easy to follow and keeps you guessing right until the very end, which is
exactly what I look for when I choose a psychological thriller. It follows a
group of young girls who are best friends and the consequences that follow when
one of them is murdered. The story begins with Sophie, a 17-year old girl,
being driven home by a pair of police officers after what appears to be a
drunken night out. The only issues? It’s only 10:30pm and she can’t remember a
thing. Sophie greets her parents with incomprehensible mutterings before running
up to bed to sleep off the alcohol she’s consumed. She awakes the next morning
to find that a friend of hers has failed to return home after the night out,
and the plots develops and deepens further and further as the story goes on.
As an author, Carrington does
the psychological novel perfectly. She leaves absolutely no gaps in her story
and all my questions were answered by the end. Everything seemed to fit together
perfectly and made absolute sense in my mind. I enjoyed the flipping
perspectives of Sophie and her mother, Karen, as I believe that that added a whole
new element to the story. I love to try and figure out who the perpetrator is
from the beginning and I’m quite chuffed to reveal that I was absolutely
nowhere near with this one; it honestly left me completely by surprise and I’m
very, very pleased with how the story ended.
The characterisation was
amazing and I found myself getting attached to the characters- I empathised
with both Sophie and Karen, felt irritated by some of their actions and found
myself hoping for a positive outcome when things got a little creepy. I
definitely doubted the integrity of every blooming character out there, even
the ones who had given me no reason to doubt them! All signs of an amazing
book.
I enjoyed Sam’s inclusion of
agoraphobia in the tale- it was very informative and helped me start to develop
my understanding of a phobia which I really don’t know a lot about. I found
myself feeling incredibly sorry for Karen and I honestly can’t begin to
understand how it feels to feel like a prisoner in your own home. I was hooked
on the story from the word go and have already recommended it to a few people.
I know for a fact that my work colleague downloaded the eBook from Amazon on my
recommendation, so I’m hoping that she loves it as much as I did.
Thanks to Avon Books for my copy of the book!
4.5/5.
