Are You Watching
By Vincent Ralph
Blurb
Ten years ago, Jess's mother was murdered by the Magpie Man.
She was the first of his victims but not the last.
Now Jess is the star of a YouTube reality series and she's using it to catch the killer once and for all.
The whole world is watching her every move.
And so is the Magpie Man.
Our Review
Are You Watching? By Vincent Ralph was a very engaging book. I received a copy for review on my kindle which had some formatting issues and was missing ‘fi’ on all words beginning with those two letters, but I persevered because the book was so good. All I wanted to do was to read the book every moment of every day.
Jessica was just 7 when her mother was brutally murdered just a few minutes from their home. She was the first victim of a serial killer who has yet to be caught ten years on. Jessica has a plan to change that. She enters a competition to be the star of a reality tv programme called The Eye streamed live on YouTube one a day for three months. This is outside of her comfort zone, but she isn’t doing this for the fame, she is doing this to catch a killer.
“My mum was killed by the Magpie man.’
The guy nods and I wait for him to reply.
When he doesn’t, I say, ‘Fifty-one seconds from home she was strangled to death and left to be rained on all night.’
They say to start with a bang and that’s the biggest bang I’ve got.”
There were definitely times when I wanted to shake Jessica for the foolish things she did and her dad for the foolish things he continued to let her do. This continued lack of action was probably the only criticism of the book, but I chose to suspend my disbelief and just enjoy the story.
“I want to catch the Magpie Man and this is how I’m going to do it…It was Dad who gave the murderer his name. He said the Magpie Man liked shiny things and Mum was the shiniest of all. He said she’d been borrowed.”
Her dad was broken after her mum died. I thought the author did particularly well at illustrating their grief and the way it had an effect on every aspect of their life. It felt real.
“Your grief journey changes when you aren’t looking. It moves in fractions; black shifting through a thousand shades of grey. Eventually, it transfers into something else: a dull ache; a numbness that becomes the norm.”
Both Jessica and her father were very well written characters.
“Some broken people look fine from the outside, but not my dad. He wears his heartbreak like a second skin, his eyes grey and heavy, his grief shouting over everything else.”
I loved everything about this book and I did not for one minute guess who the killer was.
Our Final Rating...
Read & Shared 37 Times.
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