Saving Sophie by Sam Carrington Book Review

BLURB:

A teenage girl is missing. Is your daughter involved, or is she next?

Your daughter is in danger. But can you trust her?

When Karen Finch’s seventeen-year-old daughter Sophie arrives home after a night out, drunk and accompanied by police officers, no one is smiling the morning after. But Sophie remembers nothing about how she got into such a state.

Twelve hours later, Sophie’s friend Amy has still not returned home. Then the body of a young woman is found.

Karen is sure that Sophie knows more than she is letting on. But Karen has her own demons to fight. She struggles to go beyond her own door without a panic attack.

As she becomes convinced that Sophie is not only involved but also in danger, Karen must confront her own anxieties to stop whoever killed one young girl moving on to another – Sophie.

A taut psychological thriller, perfect for fans of The Girl on the Train and I Let You Go.

MY THOUGHTS: 

From the moment I started reading Saving Sophie, I was hooked, and the tension that grabbed me from the beginning carried me right through to the end. The writing is taut and keeps you guessing, with plenty of twist and turns along the way.

At the beginning of the novel, Sophie is brought home drunk by the police after a night out, and it isn’t even late. No question about it, her parents are furious with her and when it is discovered that her friend Amy didn’t return home, tensions begin to stretch out tight. Before long a body is found and Sophie finds herself at the center of a murder investigation. She makes for a great, unreliable narrator and she keeps the reader on tenterhooks as she tries to delve deeper as she attempts to work out what happened that night.  

I liked Karen’s character, Sophie’s mother, there were points when I found myself shaking my head when she wouldn’t go and visit her best friend, the mother of the murdered girl, but Karen suffers from agoraphobia after she was attacked two years previously. This is an obstacle she has to overcome in the novel and is a magnet for creating tension. I thought this was an interesting idea to explore as I hadn’t come across it in any previous crime or psychological novels I have recently read.

I would have liked to have seen more action from DI Wade and DI Lindsay. I really enjoyed reading the scenes between them and I would have liked to have found out more about their characters and what they were investigation. It was a breath of fresh air to read about a detective character who doesn’t have a haunted or damaged background. I did read in the questions Sam answered at the back, that these characters will appear in her next book so I’m hoping to learn more about them in her next piece of work.

The ending of Saving Sophie shook me to the core and I’m still thinking about it a couple of days after I finished reading the book. For me, that is always the sign of a good book, to carry on thinking about the plot a long time after the final page has been turned. Overall, I thought Saving Sophie was a five star read and I can’t wait for Sam’s next book and to see what she does next. 

Publisher: Avon 

Publication date: 12th August 2016 (Kindle) 15th December 2016 (Paperback)

Print length: 400 pages

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Saving-Sophie-gripping-psychological-brilliant/dp/0008191816/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1473330479&sr=1-1