Everyone else seems to rave about this book, unfortunately it didn't grip me and I gave up for good on my 3rd attempt.
Thank you for the advanced reading opportunity.

As soon as read the premise for Friend Request I knew it was one I had to get my hands on as soon as possible. It sounded so creepy and intriguing, and I’m pleased to say that I very much enjoyed reading it.

This is very a prescient novel with the way social media plays such a huge part in our lives now and it’s so easy to see a new friend request and because we recognise the name and profile photo we believe it’s who we’re told it is because how would we know otherwise? Louise gets a shock when she gets a friend request from an old school friend, who has been missing for twenty five years but she feels compelled to accept it and to find out what is going on. This really unnerved me because a few years ago I got a friend request from a boy I’d known at school, the photo was of him as a teenager and the name was correct… except I knew it couldn’t be genuine because my mum still lived in the town I’d grown up in and she knew he’d been tragically killed in an accident soon after we left school. It was very creepy. Obviously I reported the profile and it was eventually removed but it did make me wonder how many people, perhaps people who no longer had connections to our home town, would have been taken in by the profile. So it felt totally believable to me that Louise would want to know more about her old friend.

Friend Request is told in a dual timeline: one strand is the present day where Louise is increasingly unsettled by strange happenings and also dealing with messages supposedly from Maria. The other strand is back in 1989 and leads up to what happened to Maria’s disappearance. I loved how the picture of events was gradually built up and found this novel near impossible to put down as the tension ramped up.

A school reunion is organised and Louise feels compelled to attend, and this is the part of the novel where we also get the leaving party from 1989 so all the main people in the novel are at these parties across the years and I loved how it was all played out. It gave a sense of past and present being overlapped and you get a real sense of who these people were as teenagers and how quickly people can revert to those personality traits in stressful situations. By this point I didn’t trust anyone, and I wasn’t even sure Louise was telling the whole truth so I was on the edge of my seat reading it.

I read this book as I was trying to get out of a bit of a reading slump and it definitely got me out of it because I just didn’t want to put this book down until I knew what was going on. I read in two sittings and immediately recommended it to a friend who was looking for an unputdownable novel.

I recommend Friend Request, it’s a fast-paced novel that will keep you questioning who you can trust right through to the end!

Wow brilliant strange and twisty read that keeps you guessing untill the end i couls not stop reading this book once i had started

I got kind of sucked in from the first pages of this book. It started quite idyllic, a single mother with her little boy. The pressure slowly building up after Louise receives the friend request, and it continues throughout the whole book.
Our main character is, of course, Louise, even though she had a tough divorce which broke her, she got her life together and is a successful businesswoman. Throughout the book, we meet a lot of unique characters, not only from her present but from the past as well. I really liked Louise as a character, she proved to me, that people are able to change.
The narrative, that is the part of this book which I really loved. I think it is very well crafted and filled with a lot of feelings, emotions and fantastic twists and turns. It is pretty hard to describe it without spoilers, but let's try. I do have to mention, that this novel is about bullying, drugs and its consequences to peoples lives. Louise has done something really bad when she was at school, and that thing is haunting her 25 years later. The author does not leave it to this disappearance of Maria only, she spices it up with a murder and ton of twists and illusion. I should say that Laura is a master for creating an illusion. The plot was time traveling between present and 1989, opening up the events little by little, and creating even more suspense and wish to find out more. One thing that kind of annoyed me was the constant mention of “I did such a horrible thing”, and when you find out what she has done, it wasn’t that WOW at all… :/ Another thing what really annoyed me, that these little kids were so proud about having Ecstasy like candy?! And all this for what? Fitting in? WHERE ARE YOUR BRAINS PEOPLE??? :@ (counting to ten to calm down….)
This was a very well thought through the novel, with easy language and overall pleasant writing style. I liked the not-too-long, not-too-short chapters, and I think that the ending of this book was incredibly unexpected, and rounded this story really nicely. So, to conclude, I do strongly recommend this compelling and chilling book, filled with incredible story, unexpected turns, and things which are not as they seem to be. I hope you will enjoy it as much as I did. :)

This is a book with a very now feel as it features strongly social media, particularly Facebook and the title of the novel is of course a Friend Request on Facebook. Nothing unusual in that until you realise that the friend Louise thought had been dead for 25 years now has an account and wants to be her friend.

There is a flip flop story line between the present day and a looming school reunion in 2016 with Louise's school days in 1989 and a leavers' party. They say you should never go back, but Louise is intent on finding out if the girl she knew in 1989 and tragically died is actually still alive. But what mainly happens is the person she is today becomes tangled up in the teenage girl insecurities she once had. Except now she has a young son to safeguard.

The only time I got a tiny bit confused is when both timelines where at a party, one for the 1989 leavers and the other the 2016 reunion. As they alternated and both were at a party with the same people I had to concentrate on which era was being featured. Otherwise this was a real page turner of a book. With the author writing characters who all seem to be holding the smoking gun!

There is another story running through the book, which until the end you are not quite sure which character's voice is narrating it. I had various theories, but all were shot dead in the water when the final truth begins to surface and I for one did not see it coming.

I'm giving this book five out of five stars for an excellent read. My thanks to Netgalley for a copy for review.

3 - 3.5 stars.

Louise is a divorced mother of one, an interior designer working from home, and a daughter and friend who is just a little bit lonely in her life. When this book opens in 2016, Louise receives a Facebook friend request from a girl she went to school with. The unusual thing about it is, this girl - Maria - has been dead for 25 years.

Truly spooked from this strange notification, Louise is drawn back into her past, back to her teenage years in high school and to the people she tried to impress and tried to hurt. Eager to impress a group of mean girls, but one in particular (Sophie), Louise became the bully she herself feared. In an incident where she added to the misery Maria was already experiencing, Louise may have gone a little to far in proving to Sophie that she deserved a seat at the popular girls’ lunch table. Now, faced with Maria’s school photo and a request to be friends, Louise wonders if her old acquaintance is dead at all.

There was a lot I enjoyed about this book. It is a well thought out thriller with a steady pace and an inviting plot. The discussions of bullying, social media and online privacy were interesting and the characters well developed. I felt the dialogue to be a little unnatural in places, particularly when things are coming towards a conclusion and the details are unraveling. I also was a bit skeptical about some of the minor details (how did Maria’s profile stay secret? Surely mutual friends of Louise’s and Sophie’s would see on their timeline that “Louise is now friends with Maria Weston”). I also wondered why the author left it so late to reveal details of Louise and her ex-husband’s marriage. I felt like it made Louise a little untrustworthy, like she wasn’t revealing her true self to us. But as I said, these should be considered minor details and shouldn’t take too much from the overall enjoyment of this book.

Overall this was an entertaining read that certainly kept me engaged. The thing with thrillers is that I find them a light read; popcorn for the brain, if you will. I would be happy to read another book by Laura Marshall.

Wow!! This book had me hooked from very early on. A real page turner and one that will stay with me for a long time, best book I have read in the past 12 months.

Once this book grips you it doesn't let go until the very end.... Highly recommended!

This was an interesting read. Not your normal thriller.

I felt the characterisation in this novel was excellent, I felt everything through Louise's eyes.

I loved the way the writer captured the teenage angst and peer pressure felt by they young Louise . The description of the feelings and pressures of the young 16 year old girl, took me back in time to my own school days, that terrible need to fit in , be attractive and the crushing lack of self confidence. In this case all of those things mount up to lead Louise to make a very poor decision, which haunts her for the rest of her life.

She holds herself responsible for the fate of a new girl at school, whom she initially befriends, and then goes on to bully, coerced by her "friends".

In present day, she has married and divorced , had a son, whom she adores, and set up a successful business, but then events from the past start to catch up and her world starts to unravel.

Throughout we are never quite sure who is behind it all- and there are plenty of red herrings along the way.

All in all a very enjoyable read, from a writer who clearly has great skill. I will look forward to more from this writer.

I loved the premise of this book. A friend request on Facebook which stirs memories, emotions, and brings about a gut wrenching fear. And if that request is followed by murder and dead bodies, then that would make the main character shiver and the reader scream in excitement. And this is exactly what happened in this book by Laura Marshall.
Louise gets a Facebook friend request from Maria Weston-super-Mare who had disappeared 25years ago. And that shook her up to her soul. What really happened that prom night? Where is Maria, where has she been in all these years? Who is playing these games? Who is killing off people? What is Louise hiding?
The author Laura has done a fabulous job in keeping readers intrigued, the suspense keeps on adding up as the pages are turned to reach a crescendo. The story told in dual time line, ticks off all the boxes that make it a great read. This book sends a shiver down the spine and I think I am going to think hard before accepting old friends request on Facebook...
A thriller which really thrills. Fabulous read well recommended

This really was a gripping and addictive psychological thriller. Most of us have done, or been involved in, things in our young days that we would go back and do differently. With Louise Williams, this is bigger than most, and she has been living with a hidden secret for 25 years. Until she receives a facebook friend request from Maria Weston. But Maria is dead. She disappeared from the school leavers' party 25 years ago. And now there is a reunion for the class of 1989. What will happen? How are the lives all linked? Louise married Sam, the boy she had a crush on at school, but who was too cool for her back then. They're now divorced but see each other through their son. Louise makes contact with Sophie, her so called friend from school. The story moves between the present, with Louise feeling someone watching her, following her and sending messages, and the past during that fateful school year. There's another voice though, an italicised story of someone feeling trapped. Until the end I hadn't worked out whose story this was, and this was a clever twist which shocked me. I couldn't put this down - and basically devoted a whole Saturday morning to finishing it! Gripping, compulsive, addictive indeed - and terrifying!

LOVED this. As an avid facebook user I could really relate. Chilling in parts but also very relatable characters. Loved the past chapters.

Loved this book, a totally gripping book, I literally couldn't put it down.

An event that took place in 1989 comes back to haunt a single mum, the ending completely took me by suprise.

Highly recommended and a full 5 stars from me.

Friend Request is a solid psychological thriller which will make you check your privacy settings on social media!
It’s not terribly twisty but it’s an easy, addictive read.
Thanks to Little, Brown Book Group for allowing me to read this book in exchange for an honest review.

Above average thriller
Kept me guessing to a fine conclusion

Louise receives a Facebook friend request from an old school friend... a girl that has been missing, presumed dead for the last 27 years. As Louise deals with her guilt from her own teenage behaviour and those of her old friends, the story unfolds of what happened the night Maria when missing.
Friend Request definitely kept me guessing and I was surprised with the ending and finding out who did what back in 1989. I didn’t really warm to any of the characters. Louise receives the friend request before we’ve really learnt anything about her. I didn’t feel like I knew her or really wanted to. Her best friend Polly flitted in and out of the story when she was needed but didn’t feel like a genuine friendship.
The good thing about this book is the way it portrays feelings about our teenage years. So many of us have regrets or relationships that were broken during our teenage years and even in adulthood, certain thoughts and feelings can take you right back and put you back in high school and make you feel insecure and unsure of yourself.
Friend Request is worth a read but didn’t blow me away.
Thank you to NetGalley for the advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.

I liked this story, but get quite annoyed with this new trend for taglines in the title - 'The most addictive psychological thriller you'll read this year'. Is this meant to make us buy books? I really wish they wouldn't do this. So, no, it wasn't. It was a perfectly reasonable story, quite interesting, and I was glad to receive a review copy. But not what the tag said. Please stop doing that, authors/publishers. You are setting us up for disappointment.

Thank you to Netgalley and Little, Brown Book Group UK for providing me with a copy of this book.

I highly recommend this book.

High on emotion, very psychological and frightening in places.

Well what can I say? I didn't read anything about this book before I got a copy and I am so glad that I dived straight into reading. I like creepy thrillers/psychological thrillers etc, so i thought why not give this a go and I am so glad that I did. I absolutely loved this book and had to sit and think about this review before writing it.

For Laura Marshall this is her debut novel and I must say "Wow" This has so many emotions runing through it that you just find yourdelf confused (well I did anyway).

The story is told through Louise's eye's flipping back and forth between what happened at school in 1989 and her present life 2016.

I don't really want to say much more about the book because it will definately poil it for those who have not yet read it but wish to do so.

Psychological thrillers aren't usually my preference for reading, however I am glad I read this book. Marshall expertly deploys the heightened paranoia that Louise suffers from throughout the book, making you feel like you also need to be constantly checking over your shoulder. The truth as to what happened to Maria all those years ago is, for me, revealed too slowly throughout the narrative and I feel like it could have moved along a lot quicker. However, I did like the twist at the end which took me by surprise. Furthermore I really enjoyed many of the characters, Louise, Polly, Henry and Esther were all really well presented, especially Esther who's transformation from bullied school girl to successful business woman was good to read. I do feel that the reveal as to who was behind the Facebook messages was rather tame, and didn't really express the element of shock I think was intended. However, a very good book and enjoyable read.

A Facebook friend request, nothing scary about that ix there....or is there?
I loved it, the past creeping up on you as you try to live a normal life when how you feel is anything but normal...The past is never far away and the demons you carried then are still waiting...very cleverly written, highly recommended