Tuesday 30 May 2017

Book Review - Be My Killer by Richard Parker - Chances Fortnight


This book was chosen for Chances fortnight as I have never read the author before, and also often find hyped thrillers a risk for me, as I don't always have the same reactions as the majority towards them. 

Amazon UK
Title:  Be My Killer
Author: Richard Parker
Format reviewed: Ebook
Source: Netgalley
Publisher: Bookouture
Publication Date: 26th May 2017
Rating: 3 Stars


You set the trap. Now you can’t escape.

When an online prank goes viral and triggers a spate of gruesome murders, documentary maker Hazel Salter watches in horror. But then Hazel’s childhood friend, Meredith Hickman, is the next victim and Hazel knows she has to find out what happened to her.

Is it one killer or more? Random acts of violence, or part of a bigger, twisted plan?

The police have no leads, but Hazel has a theory – one she’ll stop at nothing to prove – and she also has a film crew. She’ll make a documentary, catch the killer, and give Meredith justice.

Her stage is the abandoned amusement park where Meredith was found. 

Her cast are the family and friends the killer left behind. 

And her crew? They keep disappearing, one by one…

I was oddly compelled to keep turning the pages and to find out what happened, but I'm not completely convinced I enjoyed the book.  It definitely has a hook and the short chapters make it feel as though you are whizzing through the pages. 

However equally there were multiple times where I had to stop reading for a bit, and clear my head, as the vivid violent descriptions were a bit too much for me, and at least one of them had me feeling incredibly ill, as I could see the death play out far too clearly for my liking. Other may love this, but for someone who is very squeamish, there were parts that just weren't for me. 

For a large amount of the second half of the book, my best description of it, would be that it would make a great horror/scary movie. There is a small group of people making a film about a chain of deaths that started on social media, and are staying and shooting in an abandoned amusement park. Yet periodically it seemed like someone connected with the filming would "disappear". 

As readers we would then get a chapter, or a few chapters about exactly what happened to that character, all the while the group doing the filming was getting smaller and smaller, seemingly oblivious to the clearly larger danger at hand. 

Yet the start of the book, apart from the initial murder, was relatively sedate and I honestly for a fair amount of the book didn't think I was particularly reading a thriller or similar genre book, more a drama that had turned to the dark side for a bit. 

Did I see the ending coming? Not a clue, didn't have an inkling as to how the final outcome would resolve itself. I wasn't even sure how to go about guessing it, I was just going with the flow and probably as just as surprised as the characters. 

Ultimately the book is well written, it kept me guessing but I just wasn't completely enamoured by it. I suspect its more one of those "it's not the book but me" situations, yet I'm positively plenty of other people will be raving about it. It just didn't affect me the way I would have wanted it to. 

Thank you so much to Netgalley and Bookouture for this copy of the book which I have reviewed honestly and voluntarily. 

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