The Dare by Carol Wyer
Published by Bookouture on April 25, 2019
Genres: Thrillers
Pages: 342
Format: ARC, eBook
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Jane’s daughter is a good girl. What is she hiding?
When thirteen-year-old Savannah Hopkins doesn’t come straight home from school, as she always does, her mother Jane immediately raises the alarm.
Leading the investigation is Detective Natalie Ward whose daughter Leigh is the same age as Savannah. Soon Natalie’s worst fears are confirmed when the teenager’s broken body is found in nearby shrubland.
Evidence points towards a local recluse, but just as the net is closing around him, one of Savannah’s friends, Harriet, is reported missing.
As Natalie delves into the lives of both girls, she soon discovers a sinister video on their phones, daring the girls to disappear from their families for 48 hours.
But Natalie isn’t quick enough for this killer, and she is devastated to find Harriet’s body on a fly tip a day later.
Caught up in the case, she takes her eye off her own daughter and when Leigh goes missing after school she knows she must be in terrible danger. The clock is ticking for Natalie. Can she catch this killer before her little girl becomes the next victim?
In case you haven’t figured it out, I really enjoy books written by author, Carol Wyer. The first book I read was The Birthday by Carol Wyer (see review HERE). At the time, I didn’t know that The Birthday was the first book in the Detective Natalie Ward series. Once I realized it was going to be a series, you can bet I wasn’t missing out on future books because I loved the first book so much. Next came the second book in the series, Last Lullaby (see review HERE), and again, it was an awesome book and I loved it! At the time, it was funny because I thought I had guessed the ending but the author, Ms. Wyer, tricked me, and I called her out in the review post. When she commented to my post, I was FLOORED!! I’m not saying it never happens, but when it does, I’m flattered!
Flash forward to the present and I’ve now become a member of Ms. Wyer’s “Smile Team” – a group of folks chatting it up about her books. I even went out of my normal reading preference and read her recent romantic comedy, Suddenly Single and loved it! (See review HERE.) I’ll admit it, I’m hooked, I won’t even try to lie about it.
The third book in the Detective Natalie Ward series, The Dare, came out yesterday and it is AH-MAZING (of course). This one was a slow read for me….. but let me explain. It had nothing to do with the book or Ms. Wyer’s writing. It had everything to do with a brain bleed (subarachnoid hemorrhage) I experienced on March 18. The recovery time had me down, and when I started feeling better, I had a hard time staying focused to finish the book. I knew what I had read was so good that I wanted to get back to it, but I just couldn’t seem to stay gathered long enough to do it. I’m happy to say I’m finally at that place where I can pick up a book and read, which is exactly what I did this week when I finished reading this book. I picked up right where I left off (Chapter 7), and I was surprised to see that I remembered the whole beginning and plowed through the remainder of the book without even leaving the couch – yes, it’s that good.
In a nutshell, teenage girls keep disappearing and then they turn up later dead. In order to be a Detective Natalie Ward series book, you know she’s put on the case. As they gather information, they learn that the girls’ disappearances seem to be connected to a series of online social media challenges. All of the missing girls have been on this same website that challenges people to go missing and stay missing. There’s a leader board on the site and the longer people are gone missing, the higher they go up on the board. Crazy, right? I know I did that water challenge, but to go missing? Wow!
In case it’s not horrible enough that these girls have gone missing and then died, Detective Ward’s own teenage daughter, Leigh, doesn’t come home from school one day and it seems Leigh is missing too.
The story is told mostly from Natalie’s point of view. The killer shares their point of view – the plans to harm other girls. I suspected everyone and was suspicious of everything. It seemed like there were some people that were known to both of the victims. The story line gave me so much to think about while I was reading – drawing my own conclusions and continuously suspicious!!
Carol Wyer’s Detective Natalie Ward books are extremely well paced and full of tension throughout. Once again, I’ve found myself finished with another awesome Carol Wyer crime thriller thinking about how amazing the book was. I love her style of writing, and I absolutely cannot wait for installment number 4!
Carol E. Wyer who also writes as Carol Wyer is an award-winning author whose humorous books take a light-hearted look at getting older and encourage others to age disgracefully. More recently she has chosen to write for the “dark side” and embarked on a series of thrillers, starting with the gripping best-seller, Little Girl Lost. Her book Grumpy Old Menopause won The People’s Book Prize Award for non-fiction 2015.
Carol has been interviewed on numerous radio shows discussing ‘Irritable Male Syndrome’ and ‘Ageing Disgracefully’ and on BBC Breakfast television. She has had articles published in national magazines ‘Woman’s Weekly’ featured in ‘Take A Break’, ‘Choice’, ‘Yours’ and ‘Woman’s Own’ magazines and for The Huffington Post. Carol is a signed author with Bookouture and Delancey Press.
You can connect with Carol on social media:
WEBSITE // FACEBOOK // TWITTER // INSTAGRAM // YOUTUBE
I was provided with a complimentary electronic advanced reader copy of this book from Carol Wyer and Bookouture through NetGalley in exchange for my post. I was not required to post a positive review, but have chosen to do so because it was so ah-mazing!
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