THE MISTAKE

4 stars out of 5

I've read and very much enjoyed two of the author's other books - Safe With Me and Liar - so I was especially delighted to get my mitts on this one as well. All are rightly dubbed "psychological thrillers," and that alone is enough to get my attention. I do admit, however, that no matter how much I understand the hows and whys, relating to women who don't, won't or can't stand up for themselves just doesn't come naturally to me. It is, then, a testament to the author's outstanding writing skills that I not only finished the book with nary a single, "C'mon, woman, get your act together and hit the road," but completed it in two sittings just because I was so reluctant to put it down. 

The woman in question is Rose Tinsley, whose younger brother Billy was murdered 16 years earlier. Because he'd been with her the day he chased a kite into the woods and never came out, she has blamed herself for his death. She works in a small library in Nottinghamshire County (which based on terminology and non-American English spellings I assume is somewhere in the United Kingdom). She lives in the family home next door to an elderly man and good friend named Ronnie; his wife and her parents are deceased, and she looks in on him every day. Also every day, she lives much like a hermit, suffering from almost debilitating paranoia and, on occasion, the return of the eating disorder she developed after Billy's death.

Background on the events of 16 years earlier are revealed in flashback chapters, where it's learned that a just-ready-for-university Rose fell in with a much older man with named Gareth, with whom she thought she was in love. Appropriately, I guess, she donned Rose-colored glasses when it came to his ultra-controlling behavior; in fairly short order, she was shunned by her long-time best friend Cassie as Rose acquiesed to Gareth's demands and rationalized them to be a sign of his love for her.

But one day in her present life, she returns home to find that Ronnie is in bad health. As the EMTs wheel him to the hospital, he whispers to her that she's not to go into his upstairs. As she's already demonstrated, she doesn't listen to advice from other people close to her, so of course, when she returns to tidy up his house, she can't resist heading up. When she finds a closed door, she can't resist opening it; and when she finds storage boxes there, she can't resist opening them as well. And what she finds there not only takes her breath away, but challenges everything she's believed in since her brother's murderer was tried and convicted - in part as a result of her testimony - and jailed.

That discovery sends Rose on a roller-coaster ride of emotions as well as the determination to find out what really happened to her brother. Could it be that the wrong man was convicted? Could her brother have been done in by someone closer to home? Here and there, the story does get a little too melodramatic for my taste, but the nonstop action - and the twists and turns - are enough to reel me back into the story until the surprising conclusion. 

My conclusion? Another winner. Many thanks to the publisher, via NetGalley, for the opportunity to read an advance copy in exchange for an honest review.

The Mistake by K.L. Slater (Bookouture, October 2017); 330 pp.