Title: Closer Than You Think
Author: Darren O'Sullivan
Genre: Psychological Thrillers
Format: Kindle ARC
No. of Pages: 384
Date of Publication: March 15, 2019
Description: He’s watching. She’s waiting.
The unmissable new thriller from Darren O’Sullivan, author of Our Little Secret and Close Your Eyes.
Having barely escaped the clutches of a serial killer, Claire Moore has struggled to rebuild her life. After her terrifying encounter with the man the media dubbed The Black-Out Killer, she became an overnight celebrity: a symbol of hope and survival in the face of pure evil. And then the killings stopped.
Now ten years have passed, and Claire remains traumatised by her brush with death. Though she has a loving and supportive family around her, what happened that night continues to haunt her still.
Just when things are starting to improve, there is a power cut; a house fire; another victim found killed in the same way as before.
The Black-Out Killer is back. And he’s coming for Claire…
My Thoughts: The book starts with a prologue that draws the reader in and creates a fair amount of suspense as it is from the perspective of the Blackout Killer. The prologue describes the Blackout Killer, his thoughts, and one of his murders. The book then goes to start with Chapter one. The move from the prologue to the first chapter is a confusing one. There is no identification that the perspective is changing from that of the Blackout Killers to that of Claire Moore, his one and only survivor. The change between the Blackout Killers perspective and Claire Moore's is one that continues throughout the story. The chapters all identify the current date and location, but do not identify whose perspective that chapter is based off.
Once you read the prologue and move into the first few chapters of the book, it is somewhat disappointing. The prologue was filled with suspense and was fast paced, however, most of the book afterwards is slow moving and really hard to get into. The relationship between the Blackout Killer and Claire also seems drawn out, meaning that you know what the Blackout Killer's end game is but it takes forever for it to actually happen.
The story really picks-up pace about 80% into the book, which is about the time when I finally felt like I was being drawn into the book. This is because more information about the Blackout Killer is coming out, there's the accusations around Killian (the support group owner), and the relationship between Claire and Paul are evolving. It is around this time that I also thought that I had figured out who the Blackout Killer truly was, but boy was I wrong. Towards the end of the book there are a ton of surprises, most of them are ones that you won't see coming either.
The story itself is quite descriptive even when describing some of the current and past murders of the Blackout Killer. There were times though when you will wish that this was not the case. Specifically, when the story goes into specifics on how the Blackout Killer killed seven baby birds out of anger when he was younger. There is actually a couple of different instances within the story where there are murder of animals and most of them, except for that of the baby birds as previously mentioned, do not go into any specific details on how they were killed.
I currently have a love/hate feeling going on right now with the way the book ended. I love how Claire evolved and how she chose to be a strong unstoppable survivor who finally decides to take control of her life. However, I want to see how Claire does that with the Blackout Killer once she figures out who he is, but you don't get to. Instead, you got an epilogue which jumps from where Claire figures out who the Blackout Killer is to where Claire is now more at piece. The ending makes it feel like you were cheated from such a great story ending.
Rating: 2 out of 5
About the Author: Darren O'Sullivan was born in Slough in 1982 but moved to Peterborough when he was 17 to train in performing arts. He has been working creatively ever since, first as an actor for the stage, then director. 5 years ago he felt inspired to write theatre and from that came the idea to develop a novel.
Following being accepted in the Faber and Faber novel writing programme in 2015 he fine tuned his hand and during that 6 month training programme his debut novel Our Little Secret was born.
Thank you Netgalley and the publisher for the ARC. This is my honest opinion.
I don't understand why Paul fought Claire so violently if he was not the killer. What did I miss?
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