Published September 28th, 2023 by Apple Loft Press
Psychological Thriller, Mystery, Crime Fiction
Today is my stop on the blog tour for this chilling thriller. Thank you to Victoria at Insta Book Tours for the invitation to take part and to Apple Loft Press for the eBook ARC.
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SYNOPSIS:
Rachel Brown plays Doctor Elouise Sparks in the popular TV series ‘Emergency’. Though successful in her career, Rachel has just learned that her chance of conception is small, and she is devastated by the information.
That’s when Mikey Bell takes Rachel from her home to a remote mountain cottage. But Mikey’s motive isn’t ‘normal’. He has a strange request. The good news is that if Rachel can deliver by Christmas Day, he’ll let her go.
But someone else in the cottage is not on the same page as Mikey. This person has different designs for Rachel, and the bad news is that this No.1 Fan has no intention of ever letting her leave.
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MY REVIEW:
“I left the bathroom and hovered at the top of the stairs.
It was the pathway to Hell. The staircase was unit, but the bottom glowed like fire. Behind me stood the devil.”
Rachel wakes up in a strange room handcuffed to a double bed. How did she get here? And where is her husband, Jacob? She soon learns that the captor who took her from her home is Mikey James Bell, a super fan of Emergency, the TV show on which Rachel plays Dr Elouise Sparks. He’s been planning and stalking her for a long time and has a very unusual/abnormal request. But Mikey isn’t the only person in the remote cottage with plans for Rachel that are even more sinister. But just like her No.1 fan, they have no intention of letting Rachel leave…
Unnerving, ominous, and claustrophobic, No.1 Fan is an addictive thriller that had me hooked from its opening pages. I was a big fan of Abby Davies’ debut – though not so much that I’d kidnap her – so I was thrilled to discover that this one was every bit as good. Inspired by the Stephen King classic Misery, there is an odious presence and sinister tension that hovers over every page and I was on the edge of my seat from beginning to end. The story gets increasingly psychotic and twisted as it goes on, making me feel like I was watching a horror film. I couldn’t stop reading and devoured it in just a few hours.
“It was clear he had an evil spirit inside him, one that he fought to suppress every day. I couldn’t help fearing there would come a time when he fought and failed.”
The story is told from Rachel’s perspective and the sense of isolation, bewilderment, distress, and heart-pounding fear, is palpable. You can feel her desperation as she tries to find an escape and I could feel the adrenaline running as much through my own veins as it was hers. And seeing the other characters through her eyes doesn’t make them any less vivid or compelling. Her abductor, Mikey, is full of complexities and contradictions. While he starts out quite eerie it is soon apparent that he isn’t the real monster in this house. That title belongs to someone else. I won’t name them to avoid spoilers, but this person is a truly heinous and vile character. They know their actions are wicked and relish in it. All they care about is getting what they want and they are prepared to resort to the cruellest, darkest deeds to make it happen. It was chilling. And gave me so much sympathy for Mikey, though he obviously wasn’t entirely innocent.
So if you’re looking for an eerie thriller to read this spooky season then look no further than this menacing and forbidding read.
Rating: ✮✮✮✮✰
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MEET THE AUTHOR:
Abby Davies was born in Macclesfield in 1984. She grew up in Bedfordshire in a seventeenth century cottage near Flitton Moor and started writing ‘thrillers’ when she was seven years old.
After reading English Literature at Sheffield University and training to be an English teacher, she competed in national Modern Jive competitions (featuring on the podium several times), and wrote novels in her free time.
In 2012 she took a break from teaching and gained a Creative Writing MA from Nottingham Trent University. She has taught at both state and independent schools, including Jilly Cooper’s and Minnette Walter’s old school in Salisbury. She was shortlisted for the Mslexia Novel Competition in 2018 and longlisted for the Blue Pencil Agency First Novel Award in 2019. Her interest in the human mind inspired her to write Mother Loves Me which was published by HarperCollins in 2020.
She lives in Wiltshire with her husband, daughter and two cocker spaniels.
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BUY THE BOOK:
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Thanks for reading Bibliophiles xxxx
Please check out the reviews from the other bloggers taking part in the tour.
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