Hello and welcome to my stop of the Single blog tour! A huge thanks to Sarah Hardy for inviting me to be part of this blog tour. I actually already had a copy of Single on my kindle when she invited me last month, because as Kim Slater is one of my favorite psychological thriller writers I of course clicked that Read It! button as soon as it was available on Netgalley. Her books never disappoint, and this was without doubt another winner! Want to know why? Please join me while I share my thoughts!
Title: Single
Author: K.L. Slater
Genre: Mystery, Thriller, Suspense
First published: November 25th 2019
Publisher: Bookouture
Finished reading: November 4th 2019
Pages: 399
“I decided back then that pushing the truth aside was a price worth paying.”
*** A copy of this book was kindly provided to me by Netgalley and Bookouture in exchange for an honest review. Thank you! ***
Like I said before, Kim Slater is easily one of my favorite psychological thriller writers and every time I discover a new title is coming out I get that feeling of Christmas having come early. Single is already the tenth Slater book I’ve had the chance to read and while I might be a bit biased when it comes to her books, there is no doubt that it was another winner for me. Brace yourselves for the superlatives and the catchy and cliche one liners, because there will most likely be fangirling involved while I describe my experience with this newest story.
You know all those catchy one liners they always try to sell thrillers with? I mean the ‘hooked me from the very first chapter‘, ‘had me on the edge of my seat‘, ‘grabbed me from the beginning‘, ‘gripping thriller with an explosive twist‘ and similar comments? Guess what: they all most definitely apply when it comes to my reading experience with Single. It was hook, line and sinker (oh, here’s another one!) as soon as I opened my copy of Single and read the first few pages. Kim Slater has a way of tempting you and drawing you right in with a combination of an engaging writing style and a compelling plot. Her psychological thrillers always tend to open with a bang, giving you a little glimpse of what is yet to come and the first few chapters will always leave you fully enchanted and impatient to discover how things would develop for the main characters. You should definitely try to clear your schedule before starting Single, because once you read that first page it will be really hard to let go!
Part of the reason that Single is such a gripping psychological thriller has to do with the plot. Cleverly constructed and developed, the plot slowly evolves as things are starting to get out of control. The fact that we don’t know for sure who is behind these escalations for a long time definitely adds a healthy dose of suspense to the story. Secrets and lies are combined with a series of plot twists that change the direction of the story and will leave you with your mouth hanging wide open. Especially towards the end Single starts feeling like a war zone with all those plot twist bombs being thrown at you… And trust me, at least one or two will completely blow you away. I always love it when a story manages to surprise me and while sadly it doesn’t happen all that often anymore, Single managed to do exactly that.
As for the characters… While I did have mixed feelings about most characters, their development and description is realistic and thorough. Flaws, mistakes, secrets and also the mental health issues make the characters feel truly lifelike and especially Darcy was fascinating to follow. Nothing is as it seems and my best advice would be not to trust anyone, as it seems that every single character is hiding something… Single is unreliable narrator at its best, where you can still connect to the main characters but are also led astray and misleaded without you even realizing it straight away. There are two different ‘threats’ in Single, and both make for very interesting storylines you will have a great time unpicking the truth about.
If you enjoy reading a well written psychological thriller filled to the brim with secrets, lies and plot twists that will manage to deceive you as well as an ending that will leave you glabbergasted, Single is without doubt an excellent choice. In fact, I can recommend Kim Slater’s psychological thrillers in general if you enjoy the genre!
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Kim is the million-copy bestselling author of seven psychological crime thrillers. Her eighth thriller, FINDING GRACE, will be published 14th February 2019 and is now available for pre-order.
Kim’s titles are also published in paperback by Sphere in the UK and Grand Central in the USA.
For many years, Kim sent her work out to literary agents and collected an impressive stack of rejection slips. At the age of 40 she went back to Nottingham Trent University and now has an MA in Creative Writing.
Before graduating in 2012, she gained literary agent representation and a book deal. As Kim says, ‘it was a fairytale … at the end of a very long road!’
Kim is a full-time writer. She has one daughter, two stepsons and lives with her husband in Nottingham and Yorkshire.
Publishers: Bookouture, Sphere, Grand Central, Audible
Agent: Camilla Bolton at Darley Anderson
Author website: www.KLSlaterAuthor.com
Twitter: @KimLSlater
Facebook: KL Slater Author
Instagram: KLSlaterAuthor
You can also find me at Goodreads. Twitter. Instagram. Facebook. Bloglovin’.
