I Dare You by Sam Carrington Blog Tour

According to my Goodreads account, which I use frequently, I have managed to read and review over one hundred books this year. And now we're days away from the end of 2019, I'd like to share with you my thoughts on the thrillingly good novel I Dare You by Sam Carrington. 

Mapledon, 1989

Two little girls were out playing. One dared the other to knock on a neighbour’s front door and run away. But this was a game that had deadly consequences – only one girl returned home that evening.

The ten-year-old told police what she saw: a man, village loner Bill ‘Creepy’ Cawley, dragged her friend into an old red pick-up truck and disappeared.

No body was found, but her testimony sent him to prison for murder.

An open and shut case, the right man behind bars.

A village that could sleep safe once again.

Now…

Anna thought she had left Mapledon and her nightmares behind, but a distraught phone call brings her back to face her past.

Thirty years ago, someone lied.

Thirty years ago, the man convicted wasn’t the only guilty party…

And now he’s out, he is looking for revenge. The question is, who will he start with?

Have you ever played the game knock down ginger?

I used to play it when I was younger and in my adolescent mind I thought no harm no foul, never really thinking about the person/people behind the door I was knocking on.

So I guess that was just like the children in I Dare You when they began to persistently play this tiresome game at Bill Cawely's house. They didn't see the danger that could possibly be hiding behind that door.

Not until one young girl disappeared, never to be seen again.

Fast forward thirty years and the case is under scrutiny again when it becomes known that the man convicted of the crime is now being released from prison.

The question that remains on many lips is did he really do what they accused him of?

I Dare You is expertly written.

And I say this because it kept me guessing right until the end, and that's an amazing thing when a lot of books within this genre these days seem to reveal the twists fairly early on (not on purpose, they are just easy to work out).

Not everything stays hidden

The book is told through two timelines.

We have the present day. A dolls head pinned to a front door, a long lost daughter returning to her childhood home and families become further torn apart.

Plenty of secrets and lies are beginning to be discovered but the root of the story isn't all revealed in the present day and this is where I really enjoyed the authors writing style because in a different timeline the past is slowly being released but it's done in reverse. Going backwards from the day that little girl vanished.  

What made this book more gripping was the fact that there wasn't one main character to focus on.

Who's to blame?

We have Lizzie, a reporter, who is supposedly in Mapledon to get a story about the local man being released from prison.

Then there's Anna (or Bella as others know her) a key witness to the crime who is back in the village to care for her mum.

And of course we can't forget the various villagers who all whether they meant to or not, played their own parts in the tragic events that took place all those years ago. You know how it is in smaller communities, they all seem to rally round one another, closing ranks when they believe someone to be an outsider.

That ending

I was hooked right from the beginning of the book.

However the ending wasn't quite what I was expecting. It fell a bit flat compared to the rest of the novel. 

Don't get me wrong, the big twist was a good one, I'd be impressed if you managed to figure it out. I just expected something more at the end of it all after all the details were given throughout the rest of the story, more consequence.

To read or not to read?

Over all, I Dare You is definitely a book I'd recommend the others. It's filled with tension and for the most part will keep you on the edge of your seat.

If you'd like to find out more about this novel, please follow the rest of the blog tour detailed below: