Unfortunately this book was given a few attempts and just didn't connect. I found the story a little too slow paced.

This was a brilliant, tense thriller and perfect for fans of suspense! This had me on the edge of My seat!

This was one of those books I started several times and was just not able to get into it. I really loved the description of the book but it just was not for me.

I really enjoyed this book and kept my interest the whole way through.  It started off quite slowly for me but I stuck with it and I, glad that I did.  3.5 stars.

This was an thrilling read that keeps the reader guessing and thrilled all at the same time.  When Viola meets Katherine, a woman her husband will mentor during a writing class, she is certain they've met before.  But how is that possible.  This sets the tone of a very thrilling read keeping the reader guessing until the end.  Recommended.

I salute anyone who has the skills set to put together a novel. The time, effort & complete dedication to this craft is no mean feat (ask me how I know). Therefore I find it difficult to write a scathing review for any writer..but I am merely here to offer my opinion on this particular title as a reader.
Katey is an aspiring writer, a complete novice but chasing childhood dreams not fulfilled. After taking a writing short course she becomes motivated to produce the novel she has always felt burning inside her, encouraged by her tutor Sam who is keen to mentor her through the process. Determined to find something for herself amidst busy family life the only things holding her back are a domineering husband and a secret from the past. 
Despite snippets of the secret being drip fed to the reader it soon becomes quite predictable what kind of incident has occurred..making the possibility of a good story slightly tedious. 
Sam's wife Viola comes across to Katey as a confusing entity. Although outwardly generous towards her husband's protege; it's clear Viola harbours some contemptuous feelings. 
The plot becomes somewhat transparent after this and I am trying to refrain from including any spoilers.
Everything comes to a head, the past is revealed but it seems rather hastily tidied up at the end and I felt my eyes roll as I read the last chapter. 
That is not to say I would not recommend it. The author has a nice writing style but the plot just needs a few more layers to make it better. Credit the reader with some intelligence and perhaps not give away quite as many clues as to historical incidents.

Thrilling story with a plot that kept me turning the pages, really well written with great characters.  Highly recommend to everyone who is a fan of this genre.

I received an advanced copy of this book through NetGalley. This book had me from the very beginning. I love that it kept me engaged the entire time. I couldn't wait to see how it ended. I would highly recommend to all my fellow readers. Thank you for the chance to review this book!

This was an enjoyable read that will keep you guessing and wanting to know more. When Viola is introduced to Katherine, a woman her author husband has introduced her to as the woman he will mentor, Viola is certain they have met before. But where would that have been? Could Viola be mistaken?

Katherine is a married mom with a controlling husband. Her husband Paul doesn’t want her to have much of a life outside the home and being a mother and wife. He certainly doesn’t agree with her pursuing a career in writing or being an author at all. Regardless of his wishes Katherine decides to move forward with her dream of becoming a writer.

I found myself wanting to know more about Viola and Katherine and their history together. What happened between them? Do they truly know one another? You’ll have to read the book to find out.

I received a digital arc of #ThePupil from #NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

This was slow to start and the build up to the reveal is gradual and seems to take a long long time! Viola makes the connection quickly but it takes Katherine the entire length of the book before she catches on.

I hadn't read anything by Dawn before this, so I wasn't sure what to expect. I enjoyed it, although I do tend to prefer a faster paced novel. There was a lot of build up to the reveal and then what seemed like a couple of pages and then it was finished. That said, I would read more of her work in future.

This is a good modern thriller. It's full of twists and turns. My attention was held to the end. Enjoyable.

At the outset the main character is portrayed as a normal mother struggling to balance her everyday life with her desire to write. But, as her writing progresses, the strains on her personal relationships increase and the reader begins to feel sinister undertones.
Even if you guess who is threatening Katie and perhaps the reason, the ending is tense.
On the whole I enjoyed this but sometimes felt it was a bit drawn-out and ever so slightly repetitive.

Thank you to NetGalley and Aria Books for this copy in exchange for an honest review.

I really loved the premise of this book but it didn't quite deliver for me. I found the mentoring story unconvincing and the coincidences didn't really ring true. The big reveal of the main character's dark secret also fell rather flat after such a long build-up.

The Pupil is a psychological drama about a wife and mother who becomes involved with her creative writing tutor after he expresses an interest in mentoring her.  Too many coincidences in the plot and unrealistic characters  meats I did not enjoy the novel as I would have liked.

A story about a mother at home who is expected to stay at home and look after the house and raise the children. She has other ideas and has a secret ambition to write a novel. She comes in contact with a publisher and his wife, who both have different reasons to become involved with her.  dark, psychological thriller that was missing something..

I received an ARC of this book thanks to Net Galley and publisher Aria in exchange for an honest review.

The best word for this book is...messy? Honestly I was confused from page one when I opened it and found out that Viola wasn't the main character. The blurb heavily implies that you are going to be reading a story about Viola trying to work out if she's met Katherine before, and if she has then what to do about it. Instead almost the entire book is told from Katherine's point of view with her being the protagonist. This is confusing at first and makes for a very different plot/atmosphere than the blurb implies.

The Pupil is actually about Katherine Baxter, a woman who takes a writing class with an author she admires and then gets selected to be mentored by him with the goal of getting her published. The author's wife is also his agent and she seems welcoming but suspicious (again, the blurb kind of gives away why she is acting this way). Katherine's husband is a controlling and miserable man who doesn't really want her to write. Neither does anyone else Katherine knows.

As far as thrillers go, there really isn't a lot going on here. It's well-written but the plot is very linear and there aren't really any twists. The ending is easy to work out by the time you've reached it and so it feels more like a forgone conclusion than an explosive finale. The characterisation is fairly good on the whole (excluding the children who are just named props), as is the pacing and general atmosphere. Honestly there isn't much to critique about this thriller, there just isn't a lot that particularly makes it stand out either. The literary aspect is interesting and there could have been more done with it, but again it isn't the story promised by the premise.

Goodwin is a decent writer and I would be interested in reading more from her in this genre. It's just a shame that this book is a little low on the thrills and has such a misleading blurb attached to it. Ultimately I think this book should have either focused on Viola or made it clearer from the blurb that this wasn't a thriller about whether or not someone was being tormented by someone from their past but rather, a woman not sure if she can trust the people offering her new career choices.

Overall Rating: 3/5

Unfortunately, this book didn't work for me.  It was too slow to get going and I couldn't get any sense of connection with the characters.

I feel a bit torn by this novel. On one hand there's the bones of a really promising thriller. There's stalking and a dark history that literally everyone in the book knows but is kept from the reader until the last few pages, a controlling husband and all sorts of typical psychological thriller shenanigans. But the problem is the thrill just isn't there. The event from the main character Katherines history is awful but not anything like I was imagining, I can't see that in that situation she would have been quite that vilified. The husband is controlling but actually it seems to just irritate Katherine rather than cause any actual suspense or threat. Even the threatening notes received are almost brushed over, one just been shoved in a bag and almost forgotten. It feels as if it was meant to be a slow burner but just fizzled out with a too neat ending.

Thank you to Aria, Netgalley and Dawn Goodwin for the chance to read and review this book.

Katherine Baxter feels like she’s lost herself being a stay at home wife and mother and craves something more that folding laundry and cooking whatever her husband Paul wants for dinner that night. She’s always dreamed of being a writer, so she signs up for a week-long course taken by bestselling novelist Samuel Morton. At the end of the week she is thrilled when Samuel says he sees potential in her story and offers to mentor her. But her husband Paul isn’t so happy and is insistent she stop writing to concentrate on him and the children. Determined to pursue her dream, Katherine has clandestine meetings with Samuel and hides the laptop from Paul. But while she is excited at the thought of finally publishing her own novel, Katherine is also nervous as she’s harbouring a secret. A mistake she made that changed her life and still haunts her.

When Samuel invites Katherine to an Author Event so she can get her face out there and start garnering interest in her novel, he introduces her to his wife and agent, Viola Matthews. The two women hit it off but Viola is sure she recognises Katherine. Unable to let it lie she researches her husband’s pupil and finds a connection to her she didn’t expect. A connection linked to the mistake Katherine is desperate to keep secret and Viola vows to expose.

This book had been on my Netgalley shelf for a while before I read it. Once I started reading I regretted that it had taken me so long. The storyline was simple and offered this book lover a small glimpse into the Literary world, something I found fascinating. But as you read there were numerous sub-plots expertly interlaced within the main story that increased the suspense and made the book impossible to put down. 

This novel is a web of dreams, secrets, lies, heartbreak, control and vengeance. Both the couples are in unhappy marriages where one partner is exerting control over the other and keeps breaking them down until they did what they wanted them to do. It seems that the control from their spouses, along with their love of writing, is what pushed Samuel and Katherine closer as they found an escape in their writing sessions; free of the watchful and critical eyes that usually hang over them. 

I liked that there were short diary entries written by Katherine over the course of her life sporadically used as chapters. It not only showed that she’d always written in one form or another, but helped us understand who she was and how her past shaped the woman she was today. They also helped endear her to the reader and we could understand how she ended up in an abusive marriage that she thought was normal. I loved how the author would describe things such as the character’s voices. It was so vivid. An example,that comes to mind is when she wrote “Viola’s asked, her voice like a scalpel” I pictured her words literally slicing the other character as she said them.

The one issue I had with the book was that the synopsis is written as if Viola is the main character but from the start this is Katherine’s story and Viola was a secondary character who shared less than half the narration. I found this a little confusing at first but loved the story and quickly forgot I’d expected a different one. As I had figured out some of the secrets and guessed Viola’s plan I thought that parts of the ending were predictable, but there were some surprising twists that kept me on the edge of my seat. The author again lured the reader into a false sense of security before pulling the rug from under them with a shocking revelation. The Pupil is an unputdownable and exciting read that is perfect for anyone who enjoys psychological thrillers.

Brilliant & Unpredictable Psychological Thriller:
Many books are described as "exceptional" psychological thrillers and yet when you've finished them you wonder what was so "exceptional" about them. "The Pupil" doesn't fall into that category, but is rather an exceptionally engaging psychological thriller which keeps the reader guessing till the very end. 
The novel contains a main plot and lots of sub-plots which are woven seamlessly into the storyline and brilliantly pulled together by the end.
The storyline is straightforward. Katherine Baxter aspires to be a published author. She attends a writing course to help her dream become true. On the course she meets Samuel Morton ('Call me Sam'), a best-selling author who offers to mentor her. Sam's wife, Viola Matthews, is a literary agent and is none too keen on Sam's interest in Katherine. Is it, as he claims, simply because he sees potential in her? Or does he have another agenda? Before we know it Viola has done a complete turnaround and seems supportive of her husband's mentoring. The reader's suspicions are raised: Viola comes across as untrustworthy.
Meanwhile Katherine Baxter has heaps of problems to cope with: a husband who isn't supportive and is domineering, a history of clinical depression, family problems and a hidden secret lurking in her past.
As I read this book I marvelled at how successfully the author, Dawn Goodwin, wove sub-plots into the storyline.
The main question the reader wants answered is what game Viola is playing with Katherine. The closing pages reveal the answer, but be prepared for a surprise: the novel has an unpredictable ending. Well it did for me at least. I highly recommend this novel: although not short at 400 odd pages, the pages fly by as you get immersed in this, yes that word again, exceptional thriller.