Book Review ~ Blog Tour ~ Spare Room by Dreda Say Mitchell.

Home Is Where The Nightmare Is

Beautiful double room to let to single person

 

Lisa, a troubled young woman with a past, can’t believe her luck when she finds a beautiful room to rent in a large house. The live-in owners are a kind and welcoming couple. Everything is fine until she finds a suicide note hidden in her room. But when the couple insist this man didn’t exist and that Lisa is their first tenant, Lisa begins to doubt herself.

Compelled to undercover the secrets of the man who lived in the room before her, Lisa is alarmed when increasingly disturbing incidents start to happen. Someone doesn’t want Lisa to find out the truth.

As the four walls of this house and its secrets begin to close in on Lisa, she descends into a hellish hall of mirrors where she’s not sure what’s real and what’s not as she claws her way towards the truth…

Did this room already claim one victim?

Is it about to take another?

 

Review

I would like to thank the author, publisher and blog tour organiser for the ARC in return for an honest review.

I have to admit that when I started Spare Room, I struggled with believability around why the lead character Lisa would stay in a house as terrifying events spiral around her. That could be because I would have run for the hills and this is a psychological thriller so you’re meant to suspend your sense of disbelief. Because it is a very good story and not everyone is scared of their own shadow like me. Once I had got past that, I still personally would have run, I quickly appreciated what an excellent, unnerving and scary thriller this was. Beautifully constructed and to my mind would make a brilliant TV adaption. Why? It starts to ramp up the tension slowly, the sense of mystery behind the Lisa’s troubled past, is revealed bit by bit, like pealing back the layers of an onion. You get to understand why she would endure so much, so that she can exercise her own demons. You really can’t help but admire her bravery and determination not to run from the hellish thoughts her own mind plagues her with and the disturbing behaviour of those around her. It is great characterisation and around her the story flows which such ease, you’re at the last page without being aware of the passing of time, having scrunched your pillow tight, or was that just scared cat me? No character can carry a book entirely on their own, but Dreada Mitchell, gives us a cast of others, who play an important part in the story, especially her land lady, who was deviously mercurial and her family who I both loved, admired and on times wanted to scream at.

It is always nice to discover new writers, ones you want to read all of their books and Spare Room has added this writer onto my list. The story and writing created lots of uncertainty and ramped up anxiety levels, with a protagonist and an adversary so perfectly constructed, you love one and love hating the other.
A superb read.

Spare Room can be purchased from Amazon

About the author

Dreda Say Mitchell is an award-winning, bestselling crime writer, broadcaster, campaigner, and journalist. Since her sixth book she has been co-writing with Tony Mason. She is the author of eleven novels, with her debut awarded The CWA’s John Creasey Dagger. She has been a frequent guest on television and radio including Question Time, BBC Breakfast, Newsnight, Victoria Derbyshire, The Stephen Nolan Show, Front Row and Woman’s Hour and numerous others. She has presented Radio 4’s Open Book. Dreda was named one of Britain’s 50 Remarkable Women by Lady Geek in association with Nokia. She was the 2011 chair of the Harrogate Crime Fiction Festival. Dreda and Tony’s work is currently in development for TV. She was born and raised in the East End of London where she continues to live.

You can follow the author on her website, Twitter and Facebook.