Friend Request has been kicking around on my Kindle for a little over two years. Yep, TWO WHOLE YEARS! With mixed reviews I'd not been in any great hurry to read it. However, I was very pleasantly surprised and I really enjoyed it. In fact I wish I'd read it ages ago! When Louise Williams receives a Facebook friend request from Maria Weston she's filled with dread — Maria disappeared 25 years ago on the night of the school leavers' party and is presumed dead. But if by some miracle she IS alive, why choose now to get back in touch? Louise is terrified someone has discovered her secret and wants to even the score. Could it really be Maria? Although the plot is a little far-fetched, I found it suspenseful and gripping. With dual timelines alternating between the present day and 1989, events leading up to Maria's disappearance gradually unfold. The twists and turns are executed extremely well — some I figured out and others I didn't — but I certainly didn't guess the ending. It was really good and totally satisfying.

Remember the peer pressure at school? You were a nice person really, but those popular girls you so wanted to impress and be part of, they made you say and do things you didn't want to do; do things you knew you shouldn't do. That's just how Louise feels in trying to be best friends with gorgeous and popular Sophie. Then Maria, the new girl at school who quickly became Louise's best friend, she disappears after a party, falls off a cliff into the sea. No body was ever washed up or found. Twenty-six years later, Louise gets a friend request into her Facebook account from Maria Weston, coinciding with a school reunion in a couple of weeks time. From chapter 2 we go back to 1989 when the group of teenagers were at school and what started as mild bullying and peer pressure started. The two timelines neatly explore the girls personalities and the back timeline answers questions and gives explanations of the present timeline. I found much of the book to be quite gripping. The question on both the characters and the readers mind continues through to almost the end of the book – is Maria Weston alive and has she come back to seek revenge? There are lots of tense moments, never any dull ones, and the telling of the story, the plot, is very well thought out and realistic. I can hardly believe that Friend Request is Laura Marshall's debut novel, she reads like a seasoned author. I can only expect that future works will be even better.

So, what would you do if someone you’d gone to school with, but had sadly died years ago, sends you a friend request on Facebook? Would you accept it or would you immediately think it couldn’t be possible and delete it? I know it would freak me out and probably make me stay away from Facebook for days, but of course that wouldn’t make a fast paced psychological thriller though, would it? This started off really creepily and had me flipping the pages on my device so quickly I couldn’t get enough of it. As the story developed and Louise, the main character, became more unsure of what was going on, I really like the way it was headed. As with reading any thriller there were so many suspects amongst the cast of minor characters, but that also meant that there were probably lots of red herrings. This was a great way to draw me in and had me constantly wondering changing my mind as to what was going on. Unfortunately for me as got past the half way mark I got very irritated with the main character’s emotions, and the way she was behaving, making some of the plot rather far-fetched. I kept reading though because I really wanted to find out what was going on. The first twist was okay, but towards the end of the book, the second twist felt like it was from a different book, with something much darker going on that I personally felt didn’t fit in with the original story. Even though I was disappointed I still think this would a good book if you don’t normally read this genre. Thanks so much to NetGalley, and Little Brown Group UK, Sphere for my digital copy.

One of those books I had such mixed thoughts about, on the one hand, a really rather enjoyable read, however, on the other hand, not so much. Sucked in by events straight away however, I did eventually find myself more engrossed by past events rather than those set in the present, its just a shame that I found myself feeling so indifferent when it came to the ending. A psychological thriller of what happens when the ping that indicates a 'Friend Request'; a Friend Request that as it turns out is from someone who died some twenty five years previously, threatens to uncover a quarter of a century secret. Laura Marshall an author who knows how to build the suspense and run with it as, bit by bit, drip by drip the real significance of this particular Friend Request and of just what the history between the recipient {main protagonist, Louisa} and Maria Weston is is revealed in a story that alternates between events in 2016 and way back in 1989 ... with the musings of an unknown narrator {Hmm! Just whose thoughts are they?} thrown in for good measure. However, that we went from knowing sooo little for sooo much of the book only to having it all laid out for us, done and dusted as my nana would have said, within the space of 20/25 or so pages, disappointing. From the pretty and popular girls who, also mean, wield their own special brand of torture that isn't so much physical as psychological, to the needy girl who will do almost anything to gain entry to the inner sanctum of the said pretty and popular but also mean girls, to the 'new girl' who it is gossiped hides a secret, well depicted teenage characters. However, I found myself unable to connect with the adult characters and Louisa in particular; finding her frustrating, annoyingly weak and, well, woefully 'vanilla'. Worse still though, alas the decisions she made/ failed to make; Why-oh-why-oh-why didn't she block 'Maria Weston', rendered her totally unbelievable as a character ... and as for her friend, Esther! Were we really expected to believe she was a lawyer? With lots of insightful references to school girl gossiping and bullying, the evils of social media, the dreaded {or not} school reunion, there were lots of interesting threads to Friend Request that would make it a good choice for a Book Club read however, I believe that it would have made a better short story than a novel of 400ish pages.

I read this with a friend. Honestly, I went into this one just because I needed to read it before publication, but I wasn't exactly excited about it. I just thought it was going to be another throwaway thriller - fun while I was reading it, but nothing special. I was certainly surprised when I went into it and it sucked me in straight away! Unfortunately, its ending was a major let down and I can't see me using this as a recommendation when someone asks. One of the great things about this novel is that there are lots of characters to try and pin the blame on. You think you're happy with a theory you've come up with and then all of a sudden something pops up with someone else and you get suspicious again. I love novels like this where you can't make up your mind on who you think the bad guy is! I also enjoyed the writing in this one. I'm not saying it's anything super special, it's reasonably simple and there aren't a lot of beautiful descriptions of things, but it's easy to read and definitely keeps you reading. I also thought the characters in this novel were very believable which isn't always the easiest to do, so props to Marshall for that! Now, for the negative. Agh, both me and Nicki were so disappointed by the ending of this one! Personally, I felt that all the build up to the reveal led to something very mediocre. Nicki came up with such an excellent ending about Maria that I was so sure she had got it right because it would have been amazing! But, alas, It was not what we thought and turned out to be something much more boring. I don't want to give anything away by saying too much but at the end, there are two reveals and one of them felt like it was put into the story just for the sake of having another "dun, dun, dunnn" moment. It was still good for concluding the novel but it was a bit left field. I also think some parts of the book dragged out a bit and could have been edited back. It would have been punchier and quicker had a few bits been taken out. I don't hate this novel, but I also don't love it. It was definitely a page turner to begin with, but it slowly got less interesting and then ended on a downer. I would have definitely given it 4 stars had it not been for the ending. Thanks to Netgalley and Little, Brown Book Group UK for giving me the opportunity to read this in exchange for an honest review.