Review: Only You by Cathryn Grant

Hadley thought she’d left the past behind. But now it’s found her.

Hadley is one of those rare people who feels she’s living the perfect life. She has a husband she loves, a charming daughter, and a job that is deeply fulfilling. Sometimes it almost seems like a fairytale.Then, little by little, things start to go wrong. There’s the creepy guy from down the street who keeps staring at her teenage daughter, there’s the strangely needy woman who moves in next door…Just little wrinkles, but then Hadley’s world is turned upside down when someone close to her is murdered. And Hadley begins to suspect that the killing is linked to something from her own past. A terrible secret she has never shared with anyone…

As she digs deeper, Hadley realises there is someone out there who knows what she did, someone who is planning to take her perfect life – and turn it into a perfect nightmare.

I went in expecting a psychological thriller, which, yes, I got – but this was jarring in a different way than many of the genre are. It’s a great narrative thread, alternating between Hadley and her daughter Geneva, with the story of princesses Clementine and Camille interspersed in between. For a while initially, you’d be confused, but the author drops tiny hints in the story of the princesses, and things begin to dawn on you. Sinister things.As the story progresses, you learn about Hadley and her daughter Geneva, yes. But also her sister Alice, her best friend in the neighborhood Deborah, her weird son Kenny, and her new neighbor Faith who seems to have no boundaries whatsoever.The story gets more and more fast paced as you read, and by the halfway mark you just will not be able to put your book down. You will just want to pick it up and speed read whenever you get the time. I think this is part of why the psychological thriller genre is such a success lately, with me and with the book reading community as a whole – it just draws you into it’s world, and you can escape into a different, exciting and risqué setting for a while, all from the safety and comfort of your couch with a cup of tea or coffee.

The last chapter creeped me out so bad. This happened to me with The Influencer too, but there the last bit was crazy good, and here it unsettled me so much. You’ll know what I mean when you read both of these. They’re both great epilogues in their own way, and make your heart skip a bit. Here, it actually made me tense up while reading it. But don’t worry, it isn’t a cliffhanger.

A superbly taut story with a plot that leaves no loose ends, I enjoyed this book and I look forward to reading more by this author in the future.