We know that Cleo is choosing to implode her own life, which seems to be going well, and we find out why through chapters dispersed throughout the current timeline that provide us the background that leads to her current situation. So this is first for my with this author but I've heard lots of great things about her so when I got the offer of an early read I thought I'd take the opportunity to see what all the fuss is about and I can now completely understand why she is so highly rated. A autora vai nos dando migalhas para irmos construindo o puzzle e quando as peças estão quase todas é incrível. Dorothy’s novels have been translated into over 30 languages, and a TV adaptation loosely based on The Ice Cream Girls was shown on ITV1 in 2013. I was absolutely delighted to learn that Dorothy Koomson, one of my top ten, or quite possibly even my top five favourite authors had written a new novel.

The characterisation is excellent even those who are unlikeable are well portrayed and you gasp at some of the dialogue with the racist and sexist comments that Cleo is on the receiving end of especially in her career. She just didn’t feel very realistic to me, which isn’t a problem I’ve ever had before with Koomson’s characters. Writing is all she's ever wanted to do, and baking and murder stories have proved a winning combination. The twist didn’t make any sense and by the time it was finally revealed I had lost all interest and just wanted to get to the end as quick as possible. Dorothy Koomson always knows how to pull her readers into a storyline and keep you completely wrapped up in the protagonist’s lives.This is the kind of mystery, though, where you want the main character to contact the police at multiple points, which she does not do, so the plot can plod along. Mais para a frente, conforme vão surgindo algumas revelações surpreendentes, a história ganha um novo ritmo, tornando-se de leitura compulsiva. I use my writing to try to explore what I’m feeling, I try to get into the heads of other people so I can see things from their point of view.

Overall, it was a really good read and if you like the slow simmering burner style of books then this one is for you. But now she has decided to walk away from it all – including divorcing her husband, Wallace – before her past secrets catch up with her. Once I had finished this course, I was going to make sure I had all the tools to start and finish a book. The story has a dual timeline - Cleo wants a divorce in the present day from her husband she's clearly still in love with.At its heart, this is a tale of obsession, which I found fascinating (though it took a while to get there), but then so much other stuff started happening with murders and revenge that this primary theme that I wanted to learn more about got buried. There are lots of twists and turns in this book which keep you gripped right until the very last page. And this (illness, mental state, obsession) played a huge part within this thriller that gripped my full attention. This was a totally engrossing tale of past crimes and control, and tension and suspense are in plentiful supply. On the surface she appears to have it all until her past catches up with her and she has to dismantle the life she’s built for herself piece by piece before anyone finds out about her other husband.

She is a very different person in the present day and it’s intriguing trying to work out what, how and why her life has imploded. Dorothy Koomson is my all time favourite author and I’m yet to read anything I didn’t like from her, this is no exception.The twists and turns as everything unfolds was second to none and every time you think you’d worked something out, you hadn’t! I took up various temping jobs and eventually got my big break writing, editing and subbing for various women's magazines and national papers. Dorothy’s first novel, The Cupid Effect, was published in 2003 (when she was quite a bit older than 13). There are twists and turns galore, as I’ve come to expect from Koomson, but I did not see the ending coming at all and I was shocked, but in a good way.

There is plenty of tension and suspenseful moments and some well thought out plot twists as it builds to a very good ending.

We’re taken back to Cleo’s life when she first met Heath, how Trina said he was so ‘intense’ and it evolved over time that his relationship with Cleo in his mind was so magical that he had to do whatever he could to keep her in his life.