Goodreads|Amazon

Release date: November 15, 2017

Publisher: Bookouture

Genre: Mystery/Thriller

Narrator: Katie Villa

Blurb:

Four friends. A house full of secrets. And a killer picking them off one by one…

She tried to break her fall, twisting desperately, but there was nothing to catch hold of, nothing with which she could stop herself. Her single scream cut through the night air.

Keira North falls to her death at a party. It initially seems like an accident, but Detectives Alex King and Chloe Lane suspect foul play: they are convinced they are dealing with a murder.

When the detectives start to investigate, they soon find that all of Keira’s closest friends have secrets that someone might kill to keep.

And as Alex and Chloe are fighting their own demons and struggling to stay on top of the case, Keira’s killer is circling the group of friends, who one by one find that their lives are in danger…

The First One to Die is a heart-stopping and shocking detective thriller that will have you gripped until the very last page. Perfect for fans of Patricia Gibney, Angela Marsons, and Val McDermid.

Review:

This is the second in a series following the dynamic duo of Alex and Chloe, I really enjoyed the first book The Girls in the Water and was eager to catch up with them again. I think one of the things that I love the most about this series is the fact that you have two strong women working as partners, it’s unique and I’m all about the girl power! I also enjoyed diving deeper into their personal lives and finding out more about what motivates them and seeing what Alex in particular is dealing with in her personal life was heartbreaking and really helped to explain some of her behavior.

The case they’re working is certainly intriguing, a group of friends seem to be harboring plenty of secrets and the further Alex and Chloe investigate, the more darkness they uncover. Though the list of suspects is on the smaller side I still couldn’t pin down a culprit, Jenkins definitely plotted this one well and kept me guessing and then second guessing over and over again. I found this to be set at a quicker pace than the previous book and I’m always down for a high speed, exciting story and this surely delivered.

Villa was an amazing narrator, her nuances for expressing various emotions or different characters was outstanding. I’m always enraptured by listening to someone with an accent and I swear Bookouture has the BEST narrators around, every single one of their audiobooks has a fantastic narrator as well as a fantastic story, so if you’re a fan of audiobooks I can highly recommend them!

Overall rating: 4.5/5

Thanks to the publisher for my review copy.