Today I am reviewing Disclaimer by Renée Knight for TLC Book Tours. As always, I am provided with a copy of the book in exchange for my honest review.

About the book (from the publisher): What if you realized the terrifying book you were reading was all about you?

A brilliantly conceived, deeply disturbing psychological thriller about a woman haunted by secrets – and the price she will pay for concealing the truth.

When a mysterious novel appears at Catherine Ravenscroft’s bedside, she is curious. She has no idea who might have sent her The Perfect Stranger, or how it ended up on her nightstand. At first, she in intrigued by the suspenseful story that unfolds.

And then she realizes.

This isn’t fiction.

The Perfect Stranger re-creates in vivid, unmistakeable detail the day Catherine became hostage to a dark secret – a secret that only one other person knew – and that person is dead.

Now that the past so desperately wants to forget is catching up with her, her world is falling apart. Plunged into a living nightmare, she knows that her only hope is to confront what really happened on that terrible day…even if the shocking truth may destroy her.

My review: This thriller takes hold of the reader and doesn’t let go until the very last page. The concept, brilliantly conceived by the author, revolves around two narrative voices. One is Catherine Ravenscroft, married, the mother of a son, with a demanding and successful career. The other is an elderly retired teacher who is a widower. They tell their stories in alternating chapters, moving between past and present, revealing little details that are part of a much bigger puzzle.

We hit the ground running with Catherine’s realization that the book she has been reading is telling her story, long hidden, and as far as she knows, known by no one else who is currently living. The recognition that the story is her own, and the ensuing fear and panic it engenders, turns Catherine’s life upside down.

Just how the other narrator’s story is related to Catherine’s is slowly revealed, bit by bit. The back and forth narration creates a taut story line. Knight has written and crafted a superb thriller. As you know from other book reviews, I love it when I cannot figure out what is coming next and how a plot is going to play out. I love surprises. I got all of that and more in this psychological thriller.

Knight is gifted writer who has conceived a delicate balance of past and present from two points-of-view, all the while revealing just a bit here and there, enough to intrigue, but not enough to know. And that, dear readers, will keep you reading into the night.

About the author: Renée Knight has worked for the BBC directing arts documentaries and has had TV and film scripts commissioned by the BBC, Channel Four, and Capital Films. In April 2013, she graduated from the Faber Academy “Writing a Novel” course, whose alumni include S.J. Watson. She lives in London with her husband and two children.

One of you will be the lucky winner of a copy of Disclaimer. Just leave a comment on this post and I’ll pick a winner on Thursday evening. Good luck!

(More about the tornado tomorrow – this review has long been scheduled for today.)

Happy Monday.

Today I am reviewing The Daughter by Jane Shemilt for TLC Book Tours. As always, I am provided with a copy of the book in exchange for my honest review.

About the book (from the publisher): Jenny is a successful family doctor, the mother of three great teenagers, married to a successful neurosurgeon.

But when her youngest child, fifteen year old Naomi, doesn’t come home after her school play, Jenny’s seemingly ideal life begins to crumble. The authorities launch a nationwide search with no success. Naomi has vanished, and her family is broken.

As the months pass, the worst-case scenarios – kidnapping, murder – seem less plausible. The trail has gone cold. Yet, for a desperate Jenny, the search has barely begun. More than a year after her daughter’s disappearance, she’s still digging for answers – and what she finds disturbs her. Everyone she’s trusted, everyone she’s thought she knew, has been keeping secrets, especially Naomi. Piecing together the traces her daughter left behind, Jenny discovers a very different Naomi from the girl she thought she’d raised.

Jenny knows she will never be able to find Naomi unless she discovers the whole truth about her daughter, a twisting, painful journey into the past that will lead to an almost unthinkable revelation.

My review: Secrets. They are the theme running throughout this beautifully written novel. The secrets we all hold; some relatively harmless, others much more dark in their import. Jenny, the protagonist, seems to successfully juggle the demands of her career with the demands of raising three teenagers. When her adored daughter disappears, nothing is the same as it was and the truths that are uncovered are shattering. She discovers that everyone – her husband, her twin sons, her daughter – has been keeping certain aspects of their lives secret.

What happens when those secrets are uncovered? How does one’s world change? How do we cope with the fact that we didn’t know our loved ones as well as we thought we did? How could we not know? The world tilts on its axis and we are forever changed.

Shemilt is a very fine writer. I found the story riveting. Told from Jenny’s point-of-view, it is lyrical and brutally honest at the same time. At the beginning of the book, Shemilt holds an onion out to us, beautiful and whole and seemingly complete. As the story progresses, the onion’s layers are systematically uncovered, each layer a secret that has to be peeled away in order to reveal another painful truth. The author skillfully takes us along for the ride, as Jenny searches for her daughter and faces the reality that the world she knew was merely the outermost layer of the onion.

This is also the story of the love a mother has for her children and of her commitment to them, a commitment that is sometimes resented by those she would protect, sometimes misguided, but always fierce in its single-minded devotion. Anyone who has ever loved and lost, or has learned that a loved one is not the person they appeared to be, will identify with Jenny’s struggle. I’ve been there. I know how it feels and I’ve asked the same questions of myself. How did I not know, how can this person I’ve known since the day he/she was born be so completely different than I thought? Was it all a lie?

It’s a mystery, a love story, and a cautionary tale. You will love this book.

About the author: While working full-time as a physician, Jane Shemilt received a M.A. in creative writing. She was shortlisted for the Janklow and Nesbit award and the Lucy Cavendish Fiction Prize for The Daughter, her first novel. She and her husband, a professor of neurosurgery, have five children and live in Bristol, England.

Good news! One of you will be the lucky winner of a copy of The Daughter. Just leave a comment here on this post, and I will pick a winner on Monday. Good luck! U.S. readers only.

Happy Thursday.