Thank you Avon Books for letting me have an advance copy of this.
I really enjoy Callies books, they always have a strong female character and have that little twist in the last chapter that makes you wish there was another 100 pages to read.
The story flickers between past and present, so we can understand why Lou is where she is today.  As a victim of child grooming by her karate teacher, years on the ordeal is still very real and preventing her living her life as she would like.  Her new boyfriend doesn't know her history and a romantic gesture suddenly goes horribly wrong.
Lou ends up back in her hometown, cleaning out her parents old cottage to sell. Part of the motivation is to she him one more time. But then she realises that she should have turned up for court and testified all those years ago because Mike has his claws into another young girl. Just like Lou, Chloe is enthralled by Mikes older man charms, and the escape he provides, and when he disappears he takes whats left of her self esteem with him, and her world changes very suddenly.
There's an underlying theme around bad parenting and unhappy marriages, and childhoods that's supporting the realism of this story,  and whilst Mikes ex wife Wendy seems like a small character, the story would have been completely different without her.
I won't ruin it for you, but this ones a read for the fans of thrillers, who don't get caught up in the ugliness of the topic.  Its dark and twisted, but written in a beautiful way to focus on the storyline, and need good to triumph over evil. ( and I'm sorry but as I pictured characters in my head the role of Mike went to Billy Bob Thornton. )

Wow, wow, wow. Cally Taylor has written another amazing story which sucks you in from the first page and doesn't let you go to the last chapter and oh my god, that last chapter is a doozy. I've always wondered what happened in stories after the student and teacher end their relationship. Most books cover the start of their relationship and then them being discovered but not many cover what happen afterwards and it's something i've thought about often. This was a well written, engaging story with twists i never would have imagined. I absolutely loved it.

C L Taylor is one of my go to authors, you're always guaranteed a great read and this book is no exception.

An interesting plot which hooks you instantly and twists that keep you guessing. It is a book that you want to devour in one go, I could have easily read it in one sitting.

5 stars, a brilliant thriller for 2018.

Thanks to NetGalley, C L Taylor and Avon Books UK for my ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Definitely without doubt for me the best novel yet from this author – she usually gets me mad at a particularly beautifully annoying single character, this time that trademark brilliance in characterisation is there but I’m getting mad for all the right reasons and the story is twisted as sin and twice as dark, with an emotionally resonant theme at the heart of it.

Also, I was rather gleefully fond of Wendy, not sure what that says about me and probably a little too enthusiastic at one particular scene in this book because I did a small fist pump and managed to knock a pile of books off the bedside cabinet. IT’S FINE THE BOOKS LIVED.

What I loved about this one mostly is the way the story pans out in strange yet such believable ways. Lou discovers that the man who groomed her in her youth has his sights set on another teenager – desperate to prevent another child from going through that horrifying experience she sets out to stop him. What follows is an utterly gripping, often quite scary and genuinely compelling story, with many clever little psychological levels exploring the fallout from all those years ago upon more people than just Lou..

The Fear is as emotionally resonant as it is entertaining, we learn what Lou experienced all those years ago and no punches are pulled – when in the present day Lou starts to get to grips with her trauma through the sheer determination she has to make sure no more lives are ruined, it is kind of uplifting. Even with the rather rash actions she takes, often with no filter, which kind of brings on the entertaining part…

Whether intentional or not, for me Wendy was the shining character in The Fear – for a start she is definitively divisive in that C L Taylor way, but oddly easy to love. It was another strong feature of this novel that the author didn’t stick with victim and perpetrator but explored wider angles and implications which just gave it an added depth beyond that of twisty psychological thriller.

Overall an excellent read. You’ll be glued to the pages, enthralled, often aghast, compelled to the rather excellent end game.

Big thumbs up from me.

All C L Taylor books have been good and this latest novel was another page-turner that kept my attention right to the end. The difficult subject matter was sensitively handled and the flashbacks and present day storytelling was extremely effective. I worked out who one of the characters was before it was made clear, but this didn’t detract from my enjoyment. I loved the ending as that came as a surprise twist!

Excellent story line and great main characters. I really enjoyed this book. I would recommend.