Lost in the Lake – A J Waines - review and Blog Tour
It’s great to be part of the blog tour for this new title, the second book in the Samantha Willerby series of psychological thrillers.
For readers who have read the first in the series “Inside the Whispers” this will be a welcome return to the life of Dr Samantha Willerby, an engaging and professional clinical psychologist.
If you haven’t yet read that you can read my review here although it will make great reading as a stand-alone I highly recommend reading them in order.
My Review
The story begins when Dr Sam Willerby meets her new client Rosie Chandler, who seeks out Samantha to help her remember the events surrounding an accident she was involved in where the vehicle she was travelling in plummeted into a lake. Narrowly escaping with her life has left Rosie, a Viola player in a quartet shaken, traumatised and with amnesia about the accident. Sam has the skills and experience to help Rosie piece together the missing memories and deal with whatever the past throws up.
But as she gets more deeply involved with her client, who seems to develop an almost unhealthy attachment to Sam it grows evident that the young womans past has left its mark on her and she is a deeply troubled individual.
All Sam wants to do is help people but it’s never quite that straightforward. As we discovered in Inside the Whispers, her family life is a little strained, she is trying to build bridges with her only sister Miranda but never seems able to say quite the right thing at the right time and difficult relationship aside, Miranda seems to be keeping something from Sam. She’s also recovering from a broken relationship and feeling a little lonely and vulnerable herself but it’s the old case of healer, heal thyself and she just has to battle her own demons alone.
Wow Sam is such a realistic character I really felt I was back in the company of an old friend. It’s also very easy to sit on the sidelines and see what’s going on under someone else’s nose.
We are treated to the story in a dual narrative, hearing both the thoughts of Sam and of her client the difficult Rosie and at several points I wanted to shout a warning, but had to silently observe, whilst hoping things don’t go quite as badly as they look as though they are going to …
But it wouldn’t be a thriller if everything went smoothly would it? and A J Waines is the mistress of the twisty moral conundrum who paints a picture of mental distress with a creeping sense of menace to satisfy the most demanding reader.
A great book in a brilliant series.
What are you waiting for? Go get your copy now!
The Author
AJ Waines has sold over 400,000 books worldwide and topped the UK and Australian Kindle Charts with her number one bestseller, Girl on a Train. Following fifteen years as a psychotherapist, she is now a full-time novelist with publishing deals in France, Germany, Norway, Hungary and USA (audiobooks).
Her fourth psychological thriller, No Longer Safe, sold over 30,000 copies in the first month, in thirteen countries. AJ Waines has been featured in The Wall Street Journal and The Times and ranked a Top 10 UK author on Amazon KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing). She lives in Hampshire, UK, with her husband. Visit her website, blog, on Twitter, Facebookor sign up for her Newsletter.
