ShortBookandScribes #BookReview – Message Deleted by K.L. Slater
Message Deleted by K.L. Slater was published by Michael Joseph on 18th July in hardcover, eBook and audiobook. My thanks to the publishers for the fabulous slipcase proof copy.
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I felt in the mood for a thriller and thought Message Deleted had a great premise. Saffy receives three messages in quick succession from her best friend, Leona.
Can’t speak.
Don’t text or call.
Pls just come.
As quickly as they are received they are deleted but Saffy knows what she saw. She hotfoots it round to Leona’s house but something about her and her husband, Ash, just doesn’t seem right and even more so when they are later reported missing along with Leona’s daughter, Rosie.
This all happens at the beginning of the book and there are plenty of ups and downs to come for Saffy and her sister, Poppy. For me, it could have done with going quite a bit faster in the first third to a half of the book to try and keep the pace up. I didn’t always feel like I wanted to pick it up but I also knew I wanted to keep reading. The writing is very good but the pacing wasn’t quite enough to grab me by the collar and thrust me into the action in the manner I was hoping for.
There were a few plot twists that I didn’t expect and I was kept guessing as to what had happened to Leona and her family. I think this book is a combination of a psychological thriller and a domestic noir. There’s quite a chunk of the narrative based around something that happened to Poppy and how Saffy dealt with it, which definitely falls into the domestic sphere.
Whilst I think it would have benefited from being a bit shorter and pacier, I did enjoy this book and it kept me interested and intrigued enough to want to read to the end.
K. L. Slater is the number one bestselling author of twenty psychological crime thrillers. She has sold over 2.5 million copies of her books worldwide. She has also written four Carnegie-nominated Young Adult novels as Kim Slater. Kim has an MA in Creative Writing and lives with her husband in a small Nottinghamshire village.
