Your Life for Mine by Karen Clarke

  

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Category: Adult
Genre: Mystery, Suspense, Psychological Thriller
Content: Off page sex

A stranger died to save you… now it’s your turn.
Meet Beth Turner.

From the outside, she looks like any other thirty-three-year-old woman, with a gorgeous house and beautiful daughter.

But Beth has a secret that has haunted her past for as long as she can remember. A secret that only those closest to her know.

Aged seven, she almost drowned on a family holiday… and a stranger died saving her life. Survivors guilt has been the defining characteristic of her life ever since.

So, when Beth receives a threatening text message from an anonymous number on the way to her surprise birthday party, she knows her time is up.

"Enjoy your birthday, Beth. It’ll be your last."

As she arrives at her house, there’s only one thing she knows for certain, someone at the party wants her dead.

 

I've been really loving this author's books, but this one was a bit of a miss for me. The whole feel of this book was different from the others. On a positive note, it was the first one of her books that I didn't have figured out halfway through. Although I did consider this person could possibly be the culprit at one point, I suspected several people. 

The thing that I disliked about this book the most was the main character. I usually really like the main characters in Karen Clarke's books, but there were many times I thought this one was too stupid to live. I also really disliked the way she treated her estranged husband. This woman's whole life was ruled by fear, and it all stemmed from something that happened when she was only 7 years old. I feel like she should have been able to get past it years before she did, and I think her parents just made things so much worse for her. The thing was always there because they couldn't forget about it and treated her differently because of it. I also have to question how much a woman in her 30s would remember about the smells of a place from when she was 7 years old. I almost drowned once in a river when I was a child and I couldn't tell you anything about the way the place smelled. 

So overall this was a disappointment, but I'm still looking forward to reading more books by this author. One 3 star book amongst several 4 star books isn't bad.