A gripping story told over a dual timeline.

1989. Two young girls, Bella and Jodie, are playing ‘knock knock ginger’ (postman’s knock). Jodie pushes a very reluctant Bella to knock on ‘Creepy Cawley’s’ door. Her mother has told her never to go near his bungalow as he is dangerous. 

2019. Anna, as Bella is now known, receives a distraught phone call from her elderly mother, dragging her reluctantly back to the small village where she grew up but has not returned to since leaving many years ago. 

2019. Lizzie grew up in care. Now an adult, she receives a letter advising Cawley has been released from his 30 year prison sentence for the murder of a young girl. This drags Lizzie back to the same village where she lived before going into the care system.
Who was Lizzie? 

The story goes back and forth between the two timelines as bit by bit the secrets held by the small closely knit village begin to reveal themselves. 
Was Billy Cawley guilty of the crime? Who is nailing parts of a doll, with hidden messages tucked inside, to Anna’s mum’s door and what does this mean?

This brilliant book will have you glued until all the secrets are finally revealed. 

Loved it!

It was a very insightful novel, with a strong cast of characters. I enjoyed the story line very much and would definitely recommend this book.

Two ten year old girls play knock a door run at the local weirdo’s front door. She was seen getting into his truck and never seen again. Bill Crawley was given 30 years for it but claimed he didn’t do it.
The present day Anna one of the girls returns to her home town after twenty years away. Lizzie is a freelance journalist she returns home after thirty years she is doing a story on Bill Crawley and what really happened. Both Anna & Lizzie dig to find out what happened thirty years ago 
Thanks NetGalley

Can a secret hidden for 30 years cause havoc even today?

Yes! Yes! Yes! Especially if author Sam Carrington had written it. A brilliant book, the best way to start the new year.

2 girls played a Knock, knock game on a man ostracized by the entire village until one came back and the other was lost forever. The man was charged with murder and sent to prison. But he was released now, and secrets had to be revealed.

Wow! The blurb and the premise of the story pulled me in. The author played on my curiosity, page after page, until I knew nothing but the story. The outside world disappeared for me. The chapters were short and snappy giving me clues to the mystery. The dual timeliness too added to the delicious mystery that this story was.

The suspense built up progressively as the author’s writing tightened the screws on the prose with her powerful imagery. That kept me completely hypnotized until the final reveal which knocked me out completely. I got a hint of the finale, but nothing could deter me from being enthralled by this story.

A perfect book for the new year. I loved it!!

Bella and Jonie are best friends. Though Bella does. Not always like Jonie as she makes her do things she really does not want to do.like knocking on the door of the man they call creepy Cawley and running away.
A lot of the children in the village of Mapledon are doing the same thing.
The man they call creepy Cawley is getting very angry at the children and runs after the.children to scare them off.
Until something happens in the village and will change the lives of many people.
This was an excellent book and thanks so. Much netgalley for letting me read this book for an honest review.
Well done Sam Carriington bring them on.

I would firstly like to thank Netgalley and the publishers for allowing me the opportunity to read this book in exchange for an honest review. 

I loved this one! Jumping back and forth between the past and present, this book kept me constantly on edge and always guessing. There was a couple of things that I instantly guessed, but overall the whole read was a intense, gripping page-turner.
Can't wait to read more from this author!

Sometimes alternating timelines throw me off. Not the case with this book. The timelines add to the suspense of the storyline! I couldn’t put this down.

Brilliant thriller with everything you want in a book. It had good characters, suspense, twists and turns and the plot thickened with every page I turned . Although it told the story back and forth from  the past to the present the story flowed easily . I would recommend this book

It was such a great read with so many twists and turns. When you think you have figured it out, think again because it throws everything back on you that you thought you knew.

I read enjoyed the fast pace of this book and the short snappy chapters gave you that just one more feeling.

Sam Carrington has done it again. Never seems to put a foot wrong with some fantastic characters who you really buy into and a great story line. Not to mention the vivid descriptions that are in this book.

Thankfully this book didn't include much about dolls but enough to freak me out. Be warned if you are scared like me.

Wow that’s his is a must read book that had me addicted from the first page could not put it down.  Well written & full of twists.  I’d recommend to anyone.

A thoroughly entertaining read, well drawn characters and very well written.
Sam Carrington certainly has the gift of hiking up the suspense when it matters and I found this book hard to put down whizzing through it in a couple of days.   Will definitely be reading more of this authors books.

Mapledon and the people in it are a bit sick and twisted so I Dare You is right up my street. This is a well-written, original thriller with fantastic characterisation. Anna and Lizzie are the best characters, both haunted by the past. Anna is haunted by the fact her testimony as a ten-year-old put a man in prison and it seems someone is now targeting her family. Lizzie is haunted by a childhood believing her Dad was a monster who abused her and she was lucky to be taken into care and escape him but she has started to question if he is capable of killing a child. I Dare You has a lot of twists, turns and misdirection and is exactly the kind of thriller I love to read. I loved the way the book is structured with chapters moving back and forth in time and altering between Anna and Lizzie. The book lost one star simply because I saw some of the truth Anna and Lizzie uncovered coming from a mile away so the revelations in the final chapters weren’t as surprising as they could have been. Still, this is a great read.

My first read by Carrington and by no means my last. Each time I thought I had the answer, my “suspect compass” swivelled again. Unpredictable, surprising and with plenty of twists and turns, this book had copious amounts of suspense. With over 100 chapters, the pace was quick and the intensity did not lessen at all during this read. A great mystery!

The narrative is divided into present day and 30 years previous. We have perspectives from Lizzie and Anna (present day), coupled with a third person narrative back in 1989. However, what I found exciting was the way that Carrington structured the flashbacks. Rather than reporting on events leading up to the shocking crime, it is not in chronological order. Instead, the majority of the flashbacks lead further and further into the past. We are presented with events in the reverse order, meaning you are actively putting together the occurrences leading up to the fateful day. This was so brilliantly different that it heightened by overall enjoyment of the story. I liked this touch because it felt so unique and it meant that I had more detective work to do. Indeed, this certainly influenced how I interpreted the events, but it also meant that we were like the lead characters in discovering the truth about what really happened.

The lead characters are mostly female, reflecting their dominance in the sleepy village of Mapledon. I could easily imagine this small village and how news travels fast: everyone knows each other’s business. However, this is horrifically juxtaposed with the disappearance of the child and the real truth about what happened. Carrington builds the suspense because, whilst the village seem to know one another, they do not present the real facade. It reminded me of a famous Lady Macbeth quote – “look like the innocent flower, but be the serpent underneath it”.

The chapters are incredibly short. Some may argue that this makes the plot rather “choppy” because the chapters keep switching before any major revelations are revealed. True, the chapters mostly conclude on a dramatic moment, but this simply forced me to not put the book down! I had to carry on reading, to find out what happened next to the characters. Of course, the next chapter would switch to a different protagonist so, before I knew it, another twenty minutes had passed of immersive reading. There are worse ways to spend your time!

I loved this story. The mystery and suspense was thrilling and I could not predict the final truth. It was surprising and engaging and I fully intend to read more of Carrington’s books next year – it would be wrong not to.

With thanks to Harper Collins and NetGalley for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

This story had me gripped from the very beginning. I could see straight away that something awful was going to happen to one of the children and I was almost breathless with anticipation. I loved the way the author used the flashbacks to take the reader to the day of the child's disappearance and then at intervals to the preceding days. I found that this gave me a really good sense of the feeling of the village people towards a family who didn't fit into their perfect mould. The book delivered some stunning twists but I also found parts of it poignant to the extent that I was quite tearful. This is another future bestseller from an author who really knows how to keep the suspense alive.

Review posted on Goodreads and Amazon

Wow, were do I begin? Carrington was masterful in the way they wove the past and present together. The book was told from a few different perspectives and they bounced around from the past to the present, each time giving you a tiny glimpse into what really happened to Jonie. 

I found myself unable to tear myself away from this book. I was horrified at how this small village  banded together to try and have an outsider blamed for the disappearance of a girl. He was a  bad man after all...or was he? With ever single reveal you began to wonder who was truly innocent and who wasn't. The only reason that this book didn't get 5 stars was because the final reveal felt a little dragged out. Just when everything seemed to be coming together it just seemed to keep going and going. 

The ending was satisfying, but it was the way that everything was revealed that was the most shocking. This book gave nothing away until it was ready to. It made sure that it gave you enough information to hook you, but not enough to give everything away. Would I read other books by Carrington? Absolutely!

I'm  a huge fan of Sam Carrington’s writing and I Dare You is no different. From the very beginning, it is easy to see that there are lots of secrets between the characters and I loved reading this novel trying to unpick them all. I enjoyed the way that Carrington gradually increased the tension as the novel progressed to give us a finale that had me on the edge of my seat.

The village of Mapledon sounds like a place I really wouldn’t want to live! Sam Carrington has done an amazing job of creating a really claustrophobic environment that made me feel uncomfortable in places. I didn’t find any of the residents particularly likeable, but the dynamic between them all made the novel really tick.

The chapters are short and snappy which makes I Dare You very fast paced. I also enjoyed the chapters that took the reader back to 1989 and the aftermath of Jonie’s disappearance as this built up the intrigue even more.

I thought I knew where I Dare You was going  but there is one final twist that left me really surprised!

It’s been thirty years since Anna and Jonie were daring each other to knock on the door of the local oddball, Bill Cawley’s house and run away. Which means it has been thirty years since Jonie disappeared – and there is still no body. Now Bill is being released from his prison term, and although Anna hasn’t been back to Mapledon in years, strange occurrences, and a terrified phone call from her mother, have left her no choice but to return.
Because there is more to Jonie’s disappearence than meets the eye, and Anna isn’t the only one struggling to get to the bottom of it. As the intimidating events continue, she meets Lizzie, a journalist with links to the area who is asking questions of her own. Can the two discover the truth about what happened to Jonie, before it’s too late?
You know that a book is going to be a goodie when it arrives in the post with a disembodied doll’s arm with it. A slightly unsettling start to the day, sure, but you know that you’re going to love the book. And love it I did!
I’m a newbie to Sam Carrington’s writing but I already know this won’t be the last of her books I read. I’m a big fan of psychological thrillers, but I Dare You was a different level! I was hooked to the book, finishing it within a few hours. The short chapters had me thinking “just one more” and suddenly it was the middle of the night!
The characters in this book are fascinating. Setting it in a small village where everyone knows everyone – and knows all their personal business – gave the story a really exciting, claustrophobic edge. It felt like there were always eyes on every character, giving this a really creepy feeling as you never knew who exactly it was that was watching…
There are layers upon layers of tension – tension between Anna and her mother, Anna and the villagers, and most intriguingly, between Anna and the other ‘newcomer’ to Mapledon, Lizzie. The story is told through multiple perspectives and with flashbacks to the events of Jonie’s disappearance in 1989. I personally love novels with multiple perspectives in general, but I thought it was used to brilliant effect with both Anna and Lizzie’s voices being heard throughout. It made their inability to trust each other fully a central part of the plot.
Every single character seemed to be harbouring their own secrets, and the fact none of them seemed completely innocent made me feel on edge in the best possible way! Every time I thought I’d settled on someone being reliable, there was another cliffhanger chapter-ending that put me back on high alert.
The levels of suspense are unreal in this novel, and the writing and pacing were perfectly pitched. There are so many plotlines that fold around each other, and every chapter felt like peeling a layer off of an onion. No one in Mapledon comes out of this tale with their hands clean, and it was fascinating to see how complex and tightly-woven the story was, while also being filled with half-truths and complete fabrications.
In a nutshell, I’m in awe of Sam Carrington for coming up with this hugely suspenseful, shivers-up-the-back-of-your-neck creepy, and massively entertaining novel. It’s incredibly clever and has so many twists your head will be spinning – but you’ll have loved every second!

I have read, reviewed and loved each and every book that Sam Carrington has released to date.  I heard a whisper that Sam had another book due for release called 'I Dare You' and of course I knew that I just had to get a copy to read as soon as I could.  Well the wait is temporarily over because the book was released in e-book format on 29th November 2019 and in paperback format on 12th December 2019.  'I Dare You' is one stonkingly good read, which I thoroughly enjoyed but more about that in a bit.
I can honestly say that I neither liked or took to the character of Anna at all.  There was just something about her that set little alarm bells ringing for me.  It soon emerges that Anna left her home village to escape from something that happened a while ago.  At first I wondered if the memories were so traumatic that she had to leave her home village to save her sanity, then I wondered if she was running from the fact that she had been the perpetrator of the incident that happened a while ago and then I wondered if the relationship between Anna and her mother was that strained that Anna had no alternative but to leave.  I did also wonder if Anna was embarrassed by her home village, her circumstances and by her upbringing and leaving gave her the opportunity she needed to reinvent herself.  Anna does seem extremely reluctant to visit her mother and she certainly does not like the idea of visiting her mother all that often.  Or it could be a case of all of the aforementioned reasons.  So there were a few red flags popping up for me.  Anna seems very secretive, very manipulative, very deceptive and not particularly trustworthy.   What happened that led to Anna leaving her home village?  Why is she so reluctant to go back home?  Is there a twist to the tale?  Well for the answers to all those questions and more you are just going to have to read the book for yourselves to find out as I am not going to tell you.
As soon as I began to read, I just knew that this was one book that I would be unable to put down.  I just had to keep reading to see if my suspicions were correct or if I had the wrong end of the stick entirely.  The pages turned over at a furious pace as I worked my way through the book.  I would pick up the book only intending to read a couple of chapters and to fill in a spare five minutes but I would still be sat there over an hour later, having read way more than a dozen chapters.  I couldn't bear to be parted from the book.  The book wasn't exactly glued to my hand but it might as well have been because it travelled everywhere with me.  I didn't want to miss a single second of the story nor did I want to break the hold that the book had developed over me.  I reached the end of the book far quicker than I had wanted to.  I was enjoying the book so much that I just didn't want it to end.
'I Dare You' is very well written but then I find that to be the case with all of Sam's books.  She certainly knows how to draw you into the story from very early on and she keeps your attention throughout the story.  Usually I have the attention span of a gnat and I am easily distracted but not in this case.  I was gripped by the story and on the edge of my seat throughout.  There were several twists throughout the story.  Some of the twists I was expecting and others that I didn't expect.  The unexpected twists and turns left me feeling as though I had been punched in the gut and they knocked the stuffing out of me.  The story is written with a dual timeline.  Some chapters are written from the point of view of Anna and a mysterious woman called Lizzie, whilst other chapters deal with the events of 30 years ago.  The two timelines do interlink really well and the story flows seamlessly as a result.
In short, Sam Carrington has done it again and she has written one seriously, stonkingly brilliant book.  I loved it and I would recommend this book and her books to other readers.  I will definitely be reading more of Sam's work in the future.  The score on the Ginger Book Geek board is a very well deserved 5* out of 5*.

Interesting story which goes to show just how easily you can be set up if someone really wants to.  No clues to really give away what happens and believable characters which I always think is important.   Quite a slow unraveling storyline but one which is well worth a read.

Young children have been playing knock and run away games for generations and for the most part it's just meant as a harmless prank but in I Dare You, the cruel singling out of one particular villager for an almost constant barrage of Knock Knock Ginger dares resulted in tragedy when one of the youngsters, ten-year-old Jonie disappeared one day. Her body was never found but the man they nicknamed Creepy Cawley was found guilty of her murder and sentenced to life imprisonment.
Thirty years later, Billy Cawley is released from prison and understandably, the village of Mapledon can talk of little else. Mapledon is one of those small places where not much seems to ever change; however, rather than imbuing the place with a charming sense of nostalgia, the overwhelming impression of the village is one of claustrophobia and oppression. It is a village in decline, with most of the younger generation moving away as soon as they are able but now two such women are inexorably drawn back there following the news that Cawley is out. Anna returns to her mother's house after a disturbing message is left pinned to her front door. It's clear that Anna and her mum don't have a close relationship but that doesn't fully explain why Anna has avoided returning to her childhood home for so long. Meanwhile, Lizzy is also back but at first it's not so obvious why she is there as she doesn't seem to remember much about the village.
The dual time frame of the novel takes readers back and forth between the present day and the events of 1989 around the time that Jonie went missing. She isn't a very pleasant child and is obviously a rather domineering ringleader amongst her group of friends but there is still a sad air of foreboding in the chapters featuring a young girl seemingly on the brink of her teenage years. Jonie isn't the only person to treat Billy badly and it gradually becomes evident that even the adults were perhaps guilty of shunning a bereaved and struggling young man. He was considered an outsider in a village where those with the loudest voices and most stringent opinions forced people to close ranks. Despite the terrible crime he was found guilty of, I couldn't help but feel some sympathy for him. Thirty years later and it seems like not much has changed but as Anna and Lizzie begin to look into what happened, they begin to uncover dark secrets which have been kept hidden for decades but who knows what and who can be trusted when somebody is leaving a series of macabre messages for Anna and her mum, Muriel.
The shadow of such a horrific event is bound to hang over a small place like Mapledon and the ripples of the tragedy continue to affect the families who lived there despite the passage of time. Several of the characters are forced to examine their memories of the time with the switching narrative providing extra hints as to what may have really happened. Sam Carrington cleverly implants seeds of doubt about several of those shocked by Cawley's release and what his freedom seems to have instigated.
The short chapters and pacy writing ensured I couldn't resist reading "just a little more" of this compelling mystery. There is a really sinister undertone to I Dare You and I was prepared to believe the worst about almost anybody, which inevitably meant I had some of my suspicions confirmed. However, I was still consistently surprised by the twists and turns and thought the linking of the past to the present was handled beautifully with an intriguing look at how the characters behaviour appears to change during the intervening years. The moment where the truth is finally revealed is a fantastically tense scene featuring a number of characters in a scene worthy of an Agatha Christie book. I Dare You is a creepy psychological thriller with superb characterisation and a terrific sense of place. I thoroughly enjoyed it.