Perfect psychological thriller! It moved at a fast pace with twists and turns throughout! I couldn’t put it down! Highly recommend!

With thanks to Netgalley and the publishers for the book in exchange for an honest review.
This book was a gripping psychological thriller that kept you wanting to read until the end. It was about a young woman who was found by a couple when they were late for the cinema and found her alone. Her mother was dead, having jumped over the railings. They then adopted her and raised her together, even when they later divorced.
When she is a naive, gullible 18 year old she receives a letter from her purported father, who is dying of cancer and wants to meet. There then follows a series of disasters leaving people dead.
Recommended.

The books starts off with a couple finding an abandoned three year old in a parking garage and they adopt her. When the girl is 18 and in college, she receives an email from her real dad and goes to meet him. She ends up missing and her father sets out to find her. There are plenty of unanswered questions and suspects for the now divorced parents to unravel. The story was enjoyable, but as it went on I felt parts were a bit far fetched.

The book starts with a really heartbreaking scene. A young married couple Holly and Dan find a little girl, obviously neglected and abused in nothing but a dirty dress all alone in a parking lot. She has a little cardboard sign Free to a good home. A dead woman they assume is her mother is found not far away.

Fast forward fifteen years and the little girl that they christened Ally is now a happy eighteen year old, that is until a letter shows up claiming to be from her real father. Unable to stop her curiosity, Ally goes to meet him but now she’s missing.

I found this book quite a quick and easy read with plenty of suspense and mystery, that preys on every parents’ nightmare, a child going missing.

A stand out character was Dan. He works hard to help support Ally, even though Holly and her new husband earn so much more than him. He also has a tendency to lose his temper with often disastrous consequences. He’s very overprotective of Ally even though she’s not his biological daughter and will stop at nothing to find her.

To me, Ally came across as a little spoilt but she has a child-like sense of the world and gullibility that makes you forgive that.

I have to be honest for the most of the book I believed it could happen in real life but the ending was a little out there for me but it was still enjoyable.

Overall Keep Her Close is a solid psychological thriller that will tug on those heart strings as well as keep you on the edge of your seat.

This is my first book by Erik Therme but it definitely won’t be the last after reading this one. As soon as I read the deeply affecting and disturbing prologue, I was totally hooked and raced through the rest of the book faster than Shergar won the Grand National. I could not put the book down and, even once I had finished it, my head was still reeling with thoughts and questions. Only the best kind of thriller can get you that involved that you can’t forget it even once you’ve finished it.

The main protagonist is Ally, a young girl apparently abandoned as a small child and since adopted by Dan and Holly who have brought her up as their daughter. She is contacted by a man who claims to be her birth father and wanting to meet her before he dies, and this is where the trouble starts. Ally is at that metamorphic stage in life – on the cusp of adulthood and about to take her first tentative steps towards independence and eager to assert her autonomy but still retaining the innocence and naiveté of youth, which puts her in a dangerous and vulnerable position that unscrupulous individuals can take advantage of and she finds herself in the hands of someone very unpleasant indeed.

Ally’s adoptive parents obviously love her very much and are distraught by her disappearance. They have split up and it is obvious as we go through the book that they are different people and have very different ways of dealing with what has happened. Dan, her dad, in particular, is a volatile individual and he has quite extreme reactions to Ally’s disappearance which are sometimes hard to fathom and frustrate the reader, but as a parent most of us can imagine how we would react if we were put in the same position.

Most of the characters in this book are rather ambiguous and have very mixed motives for their behaviour, which are revealed over time. None of them are what they seem to be at the beginning, and are all multi-layered and this is the main thing which keeps the reader turning the pages and turning the pages to see where it is going. Nothing is what it seems and the answers to the puzzle are far from obvious. I thought I had worked out was happening, only to be proved completely wrong and totally taken by surprise at the end. The plot has more twists and turns than a Rubik’s cube and kept me on the edge of my seat throughout.

A fascinating, tightly-plotted, fast-paced psychological thriller with a cast of complex and diverse characters and a less-than-obvious ending. What’s not to love?

Ally was found in a parking lot of a mall at 3 years old. With her was a sign that said “Free to good home” and nearby was the body of a woman who had committed suicide. Ally was adopted shortly later by the couple who found her. 15 years later, Ally is 18 years old. She receives a letter from a man claiming to be her biological father. Against her father’s wishes, she goes to meet with him. Only to disappear. Now her parents are frantically searching for her. Where is Ally?

I have reviewed for Erik Therme before and I generally like his book. So when he emailed me and asked me to review Keep Her Close, I said: “Why not“. Usually, his book are solid and a good read. Then I read Keep Her Close and came out disappointed.

The book started off well enough and it was focused until Ally disappeared. At that point, the book started going off on tangents that made no sense to the original plotline. Like when Cal was tied up at the hotel. Did I need to know who Tucker was? Did I need to know who Gary was? I didn’t need to know the background between Tucker and Gary. It had no bearing to the plot at all. There were a bunch of scenarios like that in the book. It took away from the plotline. If the book had stuck to one main plotline and one or two sub-plotlines, I would have been alright.

I could not connect to any of the characters. Dan’s anger issues made his character unlikable. Holly seemed co-dependent and useless. Cal gave me stalker vibes. And Nick was scum. Ally got on my nerves.

There were parts of the book I did like. I thought that it was well written. There was a good suspenseful element to the book also. I liked the relationship that Dan, Holly, and Ally had. I also liked the relationship that Cal and Maddie had.

I didn’t like how the book ended. I don’t like it when books end in cliffhangers. So when the book ended the way it did, I went “Whaaaaat!!!“. I ended up rereading the last few chapters of the book to make sure I didn’t miss anything. Which I didn’t. It frustrated me to read that. I wanted to know what was in that letter!!

I gave Keep Her Close a 3-star rating. I was disappointed in this book. The plotline was all over the place with unneeded tangents. The characters were not likable. And there was a huge cliffhanger ending. There were elements of the book that I did like. I thought it was well written. There was a good suspense element to the book. I also liked the family relationships that were shown.

I would give Keep Her Close an Adult rating. There is no sex. There is violence. There is language. There are trigger warnings. They are child abandonment, kidnapping, the death of a child, stalking and suicide. I would recommend that no one under the age of 21 read this book.

I am on the fence if I would reread Keep Her Close. I am also on the fence if I would reccomend this book to family and friends.

Keep Her Close intrigued me from the very beginning of the book. The prologue sees Dan and Holly finding a seemingly abandoned little girl in a parking lot. At first, Dan suspects she is homeless with her parents are nearby scrounging for food and even questions whether they could be using her as a lure to mug unsuspecting victims. However, they spot a sign reading 'FREE TO A GOOD HOME' then she points them in the direction of a heartbreaking sight and they realise the truth is far more tragic.
The story then fast-forwards fifteen years, the little girl is now called Ally and we learn that Dan and Holly eventually adopted her. She is now about eighteen, is in her first year of college and has left home for the first time. Like many parents of newly fledged teens, Dan is still over-protective of his little girl and doesn't react positively when she tells him she's received a letter purporting to come from her birth father. Ally is understandably excited and I thought the portrayal of a young woman who has grown up in a close and loving family but still feels that not knowing who she really is and where she came from means that something is missing was described with touching insight. It would be easy enough, perhaps to feel frustrated with Ally for what she then does but she is still only young and is desperate to know who she is so I could sympathise with her decision - even if it does turn out to be a horrible mistake...
When Dan and Holly realise Ally is missing, they don't know where to turn. The police are sympathetic but with very little to go on, it's left to her parents to try and contact her friends to see if she told them where she had arranged to meet the man who wrote to her. As the book progresses we learn more about the troubled history between Dan and Holly and much of the tension in the novel comes from wondering how the increasingly frantic Dan will react to discovering that Cal, who claims to be Ally's boyfriend hasn't been entirely honest with them. He really struggles to keep a lid on his temper, which given the circumstances is entirely understandable but there were times where my heart was in my mouth as I feared he may have gone too far.
I loved the twists and turns throughout the novel which meant I had no idea what had really happened to Ally. In the latter part of the book, the storyline goes back a few days and we learn exactly what happened to her after she makes the fateful decision to go and meet the man who may be her birth father. The suspense here becomes almost unbearable as Ally finds herself in the clutches of a truly disturbed and dangerous individual. It's hard to say too much without spoilers but I will say that having the split storyline worked superbly to really escalate the tension here. I couldn't put Keep Her Close down, it's such an exciting, riveting and immensely satisfying thriller and I tore through the pages in a day. I look forward to reading more from Erik Therme in the future and recommend this to anybody who enjoys twisty psychological thrillers.

What really happened with Abby? What is the true story behind her disappearance? Who really was involved? This book was full of so many unexpected twists and turns. I honestly was not sure what I was going to discover from page to page and every time I reached a new chapter more questions appeared and some were answered. The prologue made me so intrigued that it made me need to read this book. Thank you NetGalley for allowing me to read this book.

"...there's no such thing as good or evil; there are only choices." In the case of this book, all the choices are BAD ones!

This is best describe as a farcical domestic drama with a series of events so implausible as to defy even the strongest ability for one to suspend disbelief. From the opening premise to the inconclusive ending, the story takes the reader an a ride so wild that it left me shaking my head in wonder that I actually finished it.

Ally was found in a parking structure when she was about 3 years old standing on a cardboard box that said, "FREE TO A GOOD HOME." A woman, apparently Ally's birth mother, had jumped to her death from the lot. A young couple finds her and later adopts her. All the while, Ally wants to find out more about her birth parents so when an email arrives saying that Frank wants to meet her, she can't say no. Since Ally has no sense at all, and since her adoptive father is a knee-jerk reactionary, things go from bad to worse quite quickly. The ensuing action and drama will leave you reeling. What a conglomeration of quirky, crazy characters! Because it was so off-the-wall outlandish, there was no way to figure where this story might go next. It was quite entertaining even so. I was very miffed at the ending, but then reminded myself that I really didn't even care anymore and was happy just to close the book and leave all these nuts behind!

Thank you to NetGalley and Bookouture for the e-book ARC to read and review.

This was a rollercoaster of a book that really did leave my head in a spin. I was pulled into the story straight away when in the opening pages, couple Dan and Holly find a three-year-old child abandoned in a car park and the body of a young woman a short distance away lying in a pool of blood. Who was the child? Why had she been left there and who was the woman who had been found dead? Finding out the answers to these questions is what compelled me to read on, and I had so many more questions about the plot and the characters along the way.

Fifteen years later and the young girl, now named Ally, is Dan and Holly’s daughter having been adopted by them in 2000, a short while after she was found. Ally is desperate to know the truth about her past, and she wants to find out who her biological parents were; although, Dan isn’t quite so keen on her searching for this information. As Ally sets out to find out the truth about her former life, she disappears.

As the plot of this book progressed, I did get a real sense that things were only going to get worse for Dan, Holly and Ally and there was an impending sense of danger circling around them. Like Ally, I was interested to find out where she had come from and why she had been left in that car park all those years ago. I kept thinking of the possible reasons why someone may have chosen to do this.

Keep Her Close moves along at a very quick pace, and it heats up as Dan and Holly try and track their daughter down. Erik Therme did a great job of keeping up the tension, and his writing style made it a very easy book to get into, you know when you just think, I’ll just read on for one more chapter, then another, and then another; this is that type of book. And I think here this is all down to the characters and the events they become mixed up in. I think what also made this a gripping read is that I could never be sure what the outcome was going to be for the characters, and I could never really be sure what had happened to Ally, and if whether or not she had chosen to disappear of her own accord. That was one idea that was going around inside my head.

If you’re looking for a quick, suspense filled read, then you should definitely read Keep Her Close. I think it’s also the perfect book to read just when you want to have a break from the mad Christmas festivities, and have a few quiet hours to yourself, with a glass of wine perhaps. Thank you to Noelle Holton at Bookouture for inviting me to take part in the blog tour and for providing me with a copy of the book to read via Netgalley.

Thank you NetGalley and Bookouture for letting me read "Keep her close" by Erik Therme for an honest review. All opinions are my own!

My first time reading that author.

3.5 stars. I liked it but didn't love it!
Well written, interesting, captivating at times, not all the time though! I was hooked by the summary.
When I started reading I realized it wasn't really what I thought it would be and was disappointed! Not all believable, a little fantasy... Too many characters, confusing at times... Just not that exciting, not the psychological thriller I thought it would be!

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When I first started this book I was so sure it was going to be amazing. That first chapter seemed to set up the most perfect mystery and I was engrossed instantly but it just didn't live up to my expectations.. I think that's why I didn't love it as much as I probably would have if that first chapter didn't create an amazing plot in my head.

I didn't hate it though, I wanted to keep reading and I was very invested in the mystery and I suppose it did massively throw me off because it wasn't what I was expecting at all, and that's usually a good thing with thrillers. There were a lot of twists and turns, maybe a bit too many, but there were enough for me to second guess myself a lot. The ending also blew me away a little because, again, I didn't expect it at all, and I think, if that first chapter hadn't been so 'this is what the story is going to be about' it would have been an amazing action packed thriller.

The characters weren't that in depth and I definitely didn't feel attached to any of them, but they were likeable, and it was a really easy to read book. If I were to recommend it, I would definitely say do not take anything from that first chapter because even though it kinda' plays a part in the why, it doesn't really lead up to anything.

Having enjoyed Erik Therme's previous novels I was eager to begin Keep Her Close, but the interesting and promising premise was poorly executed, unfortunately. The first few chapters were exciting and engaging, and I thought this was going to be a corker of a read, but it was not meant to be. I don't mind a large cast of characters if they actually progress the story, but there were simply too many irrelevant people hanging around. It also irritated me that most characters were not exactly the brightest bulbs in the chandelier, and I found it difficult to accept their decisions because they seemed like the sort of choices a child would make (no offence to children). This meant that connecting and investing in the characters, something I don't usually have a problem with, was a difficult job. I was very close to giving up.

That said, there were some excellent twists and the writing was pretty sound and easy to follow. I usually don't mind lack of realism in a book, purely because fiction is an escape, but I have my boundaries, and this crossed into laughable territory it was that far-fetched. I think farcical would be the best way to describe it. I loved Therme's other novels, so I am really saddened that this book descended into chaos pretty quickly, going off on random tangents and then literally losing the plot. I hope the authors next novel brings me back into the fold as a fan.

Many thanks to Bookouture for an ARC.

Oh my goodness. What a belter of a story. If that prologue doesn’t draw the reader in I don’t know what will. This has to be one of the best prologues I must have read.

This story is a get set, go book. It’s a chase against time to find Ally. Both parent are concerned of her whereabouts and with no way of contacting her they have to discover whats really going on for themselves.

Dad is the typical dad, protective over his little girl. He goes into detective mode. Figuring out whose lying, whose telling the truth and who is helping. With a dark past himself he will stop at nothing until he finds his daughter. I understood where Ally was coming from and why she wanted to do what she did, but sometimes its better to just leave the past in the past.

A fast paced thriller, mystery and suspense filled story. I actually devoured this in an evening and stayed up late especially to finish it. Brilliant. I loved every minute of it. A well deserved five stars from me. Highly recommend! Plenty of twists and unexpected turns for the reader to endure in this one. A real page turner. Will Ally be found?

A different style of Psychological Thriller. Some parts of the plot were less believable but none the less it was a quick and satisyfying book. What an ending!....suspense remains so I hope to read the sequel if there is one...

I enjoyed reading this book. The premise is intriguing and the different points of view added more to the mystery.

The pace is good, but I struggled a little bit with the multiple side stories which sometimes added little to the main plot. I also liked the twist towards the end.
My thanks go to the author, Bookouture and Netgalley for a chance to read this book.

The book is set mainly in present day and the story revolves around Ally receiving a letter from someone who claims to be her father. He is dying and wants to meet her after years of searching for her. Clashing with Dan, her adoptive father about her meeting him, Ally disappears after arranging a meeting with him.

By this point I was well and truly hooked into the story. I liked Dan and Holly’s characters, both obviously being good people for adopting Ally all those years before. You can also tell there is a lot of things which has happened between over the years, which precipitated their divorce and as the story moves on you find out what actually happened. They both obviously love Ally, but both have different ways of dealing with situations. Holly is more level headed and rational, Dan is fiery and quick-tempered, which doesn’t help him when Ally goes missing.

I empathised with Ally’s parents, particularly Holly as being a parent myself I could feel the unease building up inside me when they discover Ally had disappeared. Whilst I’d like to think I would be as calm and sensible as Holly appeared, I just know I would have been like Dan, demanding to know from whoever I came across what they knew about his daughter and where she was. The story twists and turns producing question after question as to what was going on, who was involved and what had happened to Ally, and as I got further into the book the answers were coming fast and furious. It did though leave me with some unanswered questions, mainly to do with Ally’s room-mate, Ellie.

It was definitely an unsettling but addictive thriller, building up the suspense and tension throughout the book. For me, the book was a great read! It was fast faced, cleverly thought out and enjoyable. What I initially thought had happened turned out to be completely wrong and the story had a completely different ending to what I expected. Would definitely recommend.

This was a totally different read. A thriller with a bit of fantasy. I didn't love this book - I thought a bit far fetched but an easy, entertaining read with some good twists and turns.

The prologue of Keep Her Close ​is very intriguing, and there is a lot of potential in the mystery that surrounds Ally's abandonment and subsequent adoption. In the following chapters, I was interested to see how her past had affected her in adulthood and I could easily understand why Ally was intrigued by the letter she received. I also wanted to know more about her birth family.
The search for Ally takes the reader down many different paths, and we meet several characters who all have their own demons of some kind. It is often difficult to separate the truth from the lies, and this keeps the reader hanging on to discover what will happen. As the novel gathers pace towards the end, events become very frantic which makes for a very tense climax.
Keep Her Close has an open ending, which left me thinking after I had turned the final page.

would like to thank netgalley and the publisher for letting me read this book

so much happens in this book

a young girl is found in shocking circumstances beside a dead woman...no i.d nothing is found on her and she goes through the system but is adopted by the couple that find her

but this little girl grows up and wants to know about her birth mother and father, and along the way she gets kidnapped and thats where the storyline gets weirder and weirder...plausable but weird,i cant think of a storyline that has ever had so much go wrong for one person over and over again...

i wouldnt like to meet any of these people in real life