Friend Request

Our Review

The premise of Friend Request intrigued me when I was looking for my next book to review. Initially, I wasn’t sure if Friend Request was going to be a pretty run of the mill crime book of the kind you can pick up anywhere but thankfully it was quite good.

Laura Marshall’s writing was suspenseful and the plot contained many twists which I didn’t see coming at all. There were many times I thought I knew where it was going but I was wrong. Laura Marshall’s writing style was very similar to Mark Edward’s, one of the few crime writers I actually like.

Friend Request was eerie, particularly in the latter part of the book. It definitely left me with a vague feeling of dread even after I had finished the book.

“The email arrives in my inbox like an unexploded bomb: Maria Weston wants to be friends on Facebook.”

When Louise receives this seemingly routine notification she is shocked, her hands can’t stop shaking and she thinks she must have misread it. When she logs back on she can’t stop herself from accepting and looking at the account. She notices the profile picture shows Maria in her old school uniform.

“Maria Weston wants to be friends. But Maria Weston has been dead for more than twenty-five years.”

Louise is alone in her house when she opens this notification as her son Henry is at his father’s house. The message has put her on edge, an unwelcome reminder of the past.

The story is told in two different times – 2016 and 1989.

In 1989 Louise wakes up feeling guilty because of some action she has performed the night before.

“It’s as though I am moving in slow motion. My brain struggles to make sense of it all, my thoughts moving sluggishly through the last couple of months, trying to figure out how it has come to this.

I suppose it all began a few months ago the day the new girl started.”

Maria’s arrival at the school shook up Louise’s friendship group. Until then Louise was a desperate hanger on in her friendship group. Her ‘best friend’ Sophie had been hanging around with a couple of other girls and only had time for her when they weren’t about. The other girls spent time talking about their sexual experiences and the drugs they had been taking. Louise is always on the fringes of these conversations so when Sophie suggests playing a prank on Maria she is only too happy to oblige.

In 2016 Louise is invited to her high school reunion and reluctantly accepts it to see if she can get to the bottom of the friend request. When the body of a former classmate is discovered at the reunion Louise realises she is in over her head.

This is primarily a book about the problems that can arise when you succumb to peer pressure.

Our Final Rating...

Sat, 10th June 2017