Today iit’s my turn on the blog tour for The Silent Midwinter. My review is written with thanks to Zoe O’Farrell for inviting me on the tour and to the author for my copy of the book.

Blurb:

Kate processes the mail day in, day out at Standington Prison. With her home life turning stale, she spends her days obsessing over the correspondence between an inmate and his girlfriend. Who is sexy Anna West and what does she see in a cold-blooded killer?
Kate also suspects her husband of having an affair. Harper, her stepdaughter, is full of teenage angst and resentment towards her. Her other stepdaughter, seven-year-old Felicity, has selective mutism, brought on by the trauma following her mother’s death.
One risky move follows another as Kate delves deeper and deeper into Anna West’s life. She’s not prepared for the danger she stumbles into – danger that will threaten her whole family as they are swept into a web of secrets and lies.
Just how far will Kate go to save her family?
The Silent Midwinter is an edge-of-your-seat psychological thriller with a shocking twist that will floor you.

Review:

I read Blind House last year and loved it, so I was really excited to see what Jamie-Lee Brooke could do when she was writing in a slightly different genre – the psychological thriller. To be honest, it ticks all the boxes for me: an unreliable protagonist, some creepy villains, a lot of tension and some dangerous situations and so many twists! 

Kate Midwinter works in the mail room at a prison. It’s rare that a novel is written from this perspective so I was really keen to find out what went on there. It means that Jamie-Lee Brooke can take us to where the action is happening without getting too bogged down in prison procedure and it’s a very effective idea. It also means that we (and Kate) are able to snoop into the prisoners’ lives and I loved getting some insight into how they lived in the outside world. 

The Silent Midwinter is mostly narrated by Kate. I’ve read a lot of psychological thrillers and it’s taught me never to trust a first person narrator. Jamie-Lee Brooke has developed her character so well that I wanted to believe her, but was never completely sure that I could. Harper also narrates some chapters and this gave me some really valuable insight into the Midwinter family dynamic.

As the novel gathers pace, the tension gradually rises and I was desperate to know what would happen next and how the plot would be resolved. The author’s writing is incredibly gripping and I couldn’t look away! 

Jamie-Lee Brooke is brilliant at plotting her stories. Throughout The Silent Midwinter, she gives the reader small details which don’t seem important at first, but gradually gain significance as the plot comes together and I loved reading as it happened. 

I obviously won’t give the ending away, but WOW! I had to read the last few pages more than once to check I’d read them right…

The Silent Midwinter is available from Amazon.

You can follow the rest of the blog tour here: