But as she tries to piece together exactly what happened that night, Louise discovers there's more to the story than she ever knew. I flinch at the thought of it, sympathy for her mixed with a shameful gratitude that there were no camera phones around when I was that age. This would also make an incredible book club pick as it would generate some pretty interesting discussion and debate. In this style, we are given bits and clues and a red herring or two, and all the reader has to do is put this mystery together. Just try to keep the chills away when Louise gets a Facebook request from a "friend" who's been dead for 25 years.

Cassandra Dewell can’t leave Montana’s Lewis and Clark County fast enough for her new job as chief investigator for Jon Kirkbride, sheriff of Bakken County. All in all this was an excellent read where I both detested Louise, but also rooted for her based on her self imprisonment. Louise accepts the friend request from Maria, because she has a guilty secret which goes back to the night when Maria has gone missing.

The relationship Louise has with her four-year-old son Henry is well written and feels real as with her relationship with her now ex-husband, Sam, whom she shares custody of Henry with. As the coffee machine hums its everyday tune, I half-listen to the news on the radio, which chatters all day every day in my kitchen: a sporting victory, a cabinet re-shuffle, a fifteen year-old girl who has killed herself after her boyfriend posted naked pictures of her online.

Memories that include her own dark secrets – secrets that threaten to destroy her carefully constructed life. A Facebook message dredges up painful secrets from a woman’s past, one that she’s spent decades suppressing. As the knowing messages becomes more malicious and Louise starts to have an unpleasant feeling that she is being followed her anxiety cranks up and she loses focus on her career, son and as the tension mounts in the build up to the reunion she is faced with the prospect that someone is intent on resurrecting her very chequered memories. When our main character, Louise receives a heart-stopping Facebook “friend request” from a former school friend that died 25 years ago it quickly brings out some long-buried memories and some dark secrets that could change everything for her in the present.

Trying to piece together exactly what happened that night, she soon discovers there’s much she didn’t know. Friend Request taps into the issue of school day bullying antics and highlights the fact that such antics are not always forgotten in adulthood – in fact, revenge can wait ever so patiently, for many years.

I think many of us have been bullied before, but not to the degree displayed in this book (hopefully).The Goodreads Libra Goodreads Librarians are volunteers who help ensure the accuracy of information about books and authors in the Goodreads' catalog. The virtual reappearance of Maria sends Louise into a tailspin as she tries to see if anyone else from Sharne Bay has been contacted. A little unsatiated with how everything ended, it seemed things were even left a bit unresolved, unfortunately.

The story then brilliantly alternates between 1989 and 2016, which the author does quite effectively. I think fans of Ruth Ware's Lying Game will be equally infatuated with Friend Request by Laura Marshall. Having kept the events bottled up for so long and never managing to come to terms with how she let Maria down Louise’s obvious emotional vulnerability and lack of confidence is testament. Fortunately, the book uses a larger font and leading, and it was really not as long a book as its 370 some pages would indicate. Louise is the type of character that I find really fascinating in fiction because we don't often see them portrayed well.The portrayal certainly explains her willingness to become a submissive wife and makes obvious her gratitude for Sam’s understanding and support.