The Fear: My Honest Review

Something truly scary is at work here. 

I said that I'd be back with more book reviews and here it is, another review for y'all. I was browsing the book section in Asda the other day and decided to pick up two books: Red Sparrow and The Fear. I picked up the latter based on the cover. It looks like a classic crime/thriller fiction cover and I was immediately intrigued. I haven't even started on the title. THE FEAR. It's exciting and I was very intrigued. The premise - when Lou Wandsworth ran away to France with her teacher Mike Hughes, she thought he was the love of her life. But Mike wasn't what he seemed and he left her life in pieces. Now 32, Lou discovers that he is involved with another teenager Chloe Meadows - was also intriguing. I couldn't resist picking it up and I'm glad I did. As first impressions go, I wasn't sure what to expect. I've never, to my knowledge, read any of C. L. Taylor's previous works and the first page was...less than pleasing. This is no fault of the author, I'm just not a huge fan of first-person narrative. I much prefer third person so I was sceptical from the first page, well sentence. 

After the first chapter, I gave up. I decided to take a break and come back to it another time. I picked up where I left off with the second chapter earlier today and was surprised mainly because it shifted from Lou's narrative to a woman called Wendy. I had no idea who that was at this point. She was just another woman that would, I suspected, link into the story somewhere. That's the beauty with multiple narratives, they link somewhere in the middle and it clicks into place in your mind. The three women that narrate the plot: Lou, Wendy and Chloe, are all going through their own journey but linked by their connection to Mike. They are the women he has blighted. He has linked them before they even meet one another and when they come together, it creates chaos in one if not all of their lives. Each character has their own darkness which they bring to the story and their fear forces them to extremes. It shows them what they are capable of. 

This novel is gripping. I found myself unable to put it down, I just had to continue reading. I needed to know exactly how this was going to end. I read it in an afternoon. Taylor's writing just flows to the point where it's an easy read despite the delicate subject matter - a man grooming underage girls. This is an intense journey for each character especially for Chloe, the thirteen-year-old girl that Mike is grooming. We, the readers, can see how her journey would end if Lou doesn't intervene. The glimpses we get into the past through Lou's memories are disturbing. We get an insight no other character has, the time she spent with Mike in France when he abducted her. It's twisted and unnerving. 

There's something thoroughly addictive about this novel. 

I know that I want to read more of Taylor's novels. 

Thank you for taking the time to visit my blog and read this post. 

Tiffani x