I very nearly gave up reading this book when the two stories still hadn’t fitted together at almost the half way point and I was losing interest Eventually the ends tied together and a reasonable ending ensued.

Dark suspense, domestic noir if you like, which, whilst a little slow to start, soon began in earnest and kept momentum until the last page. Credible characterisation and well plotted with twists and turns along the way. A chilling read.

Elliot believes he has a good marriage to Anya, until one day at a music festival it all changes. He had something to hide but he never imagined that Anya did as well.
Then there is Irene, with one son who disappeared many years ago, she is devastated when her second suddenly disappears too.
Told from the perspectives of Elliot and Irene, the first half half of the novel didn’t seem to have a purpose. Even though the story flowed well, I was trying to work out how it all tied in. This changed in the second half, the pace picked up as the story unfolded and it all tied in eventually.
I did enjoy this novel but definately not as much as the authors previous novel.
Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for a copy to read.

Reading The Killer Inside is a bit like peeling the layers of an onion. There are multiple character perspectives and at times different timelines so the story unravels slowly. It starts with primary school teacher, married to Anya, but with his own secrets to hide. We also hear from Irene who is searching for both of her missing sons. What unfolds from about halfway through the story is fast paced and at some points quite shocking, but it all builds to a great final crescendo. It took me a while to get into this novel but once in, I was hooked and couldn't wait to finish it!

This book was fast paced. Hard to put down. It flowed well and it was very well written. It caught hold of me and had me hooked from the start . I was literally on the edge of my seat reading this book.

Elliott and Anya are a seemingly happily married couple trying for a baby. Elliot is someone who cannot believe his luck, from a troubled childhood he is married to a beautiful, clever woman and has been welcomed into the family circle. But is all as it seems? This is a clever psychological drama which had me hooked, a great read.

Very creepy. There is a mum with two missing sons, a husband and wife with secrets from each other and a whole host of other suspicious characters. While I thought I'd guessed the ending close to the fairly slow start to this book I hadn't actually guessed all of the subtle twists and turns. The story was still unfolding almost to the end. A recommended read.

This thriller started off pretty well but as it went on I became more and more bored.

At the start I was really engrossed in the story and I was invested in trying to guess how the characters on the different timelines related to each other but quite quickly it became obvious that there wasn't much to guess.

I pretty much saw the ending coming, I feel like it was laid out way to easily for the reader. I was expecting a big twist at the end but there wasn't one which was a shame.

I also thought the ending was a bit far fetched and ridiculous.

I did like the writing and it was a quick book to read.

But unfortunately I was quite disappointed with this one, as I had high hopes but it turned out to be another average thriller

Elliot and Anya are happily married and deeply in love, opposites really do attract, Elliot was a bit of a bad lad from a council estate, and Anya lived a sheltered childhood wanting for nothing, but how much do they really know each other?

Mystery, secrets and lies.

A story that spans many years and at times became a little confusing, but over all an intriguing and thrilling read.

The Killer Inside
Author: Cass Green
Publisher: HarperCollins
Publication date 5/9/19
How well do you know the people you love? How far will you go to protect them? Dark and compulsive, this kept me guessing right to the end. I read it in 2 sittings and loved it.


Thanks to the author, publishers and netgalley for my advance reader copy in exchange for my honest and unbiased review.

This was a brilliant read! I really enjoy Cass Green as an author, I love the twisted domestic noir scenario where everyone has their secrets. Quite a quick read, or maybe it's just because I couldn't put it down!
Some absolutely horrible characters and some parts of the story are really sad. My heart broke for Irene, I really felt for her with all her family traumas. I wouldn't call this a thriller as such, more a study in family relationships with some dark twisted goings on. I really enjoyed this book and would highly recommend it.

This book was a bit of a slow burner to my taste, but certainly well written with a good structure.
It was dark and interesting. It held my attention despite the pace.
Thanks a lot to NetGalley and the publisher for this copy in exchange for an honest review.

Dark family relationship thriller which was very well written. A happy couple on the surface but both with secrets from their pasts which they would rather remain hidden. I read this book in a couple of days and really enjoyed it. Beware - there are some very unpleasant relatives in this story though!

This is somewhat of a slow burner, it requires full concentration to begin with as it’s a bit confusing. However it’s worth preserving with as it is a great read, once you pull the threads together! Clever and twisty!

This began so slowly and confusingly that I heaved a huge sigh of relief once the scattered hints of darkness and tangled loose threads began to be gathered together and made sense. At last! I thought as I began to get absorbed in the latter half of the story. This is where great characterisation finally joins hands with thrilling, pacey action, as the book starts to live up to its promise.

It explores the scary thought that we don't always know everything about the people we love most and invite into our lives and hearts. Anya seemed to be out of Elliott's reach because of their vastly different backgrounds. Yet they marry, appear to live contentedly and want to start a family.

But beneath the surface both of them withhold secrets from one another. They operate well superficially, though they don't really know each other as well as they think they do. Eventually, their relationship becomes strained. Trust is threatened, damaged and ultimately destroyed by outside influences and people from the past invading the present. They have to decide whether to keep their painful secrets to themselves or spill them at the risk of involving and hurting others as well.

Through many twists and turns we see how hard it is to hide their shameful history, and confess to their misdeeds. Will their past behaviour come back to bite them? Will they reconcile or lose the love they had? Therein lies the dramatic tension because relationships don't always survive well if they're built on lies.

Cass Green manages to inject elements of surprise at the end, and reveal the hope of new beginnings. This is a well written suspense novel, which might have benefited from gathering the loose threads together a bit earlier than they were. Thanks to NetGalley and Harper Collins for the ARC.

How well do you know the person you've vowed to spend the rest of your life with?

Elliott has been working as a teacher for years. But whatever he does, he can never be the successful person that his wife, Anya, is. To be honest, he can't understand how this woman chose him. Which is why she can never know his secrets. Not if he's going to keep her forever.

The Killer Inside is a fast-paced, attention-grasping psychological killer. Expertly written, it diverts the reader from the truth of thing in such a way, that it's nearly impossible to know what's going on. It's an intelligent game of hied-and-seek in a peculiar family of two and all the things that remain unsaid between them.

Cass Green has made an excellent work of creating the perfect psychological thriller to start your fall reading season. Definitely a recommended read for all fans of thrillers and mysteries.

Another enjoyable, gripping read from this author.

I really liked this book, despite it being a tad confusing at times. It’s a tale of relationships, family and trust, with some unexplained disappearance and much tension and feeling of foreboding throughout.
The storyline follows a number of characters, not all of whom become clear for a while, but, stick with it as the threads come together to a satisfying conclusion.

I was definitely kept sufficiently intrigued to keep reading and I never got too confused - I enjoy a book that makes me concentrate and keeps me on my toes and this did.

I’ve really struggled with a rating as, although I enjoyed it and would recommend, i almost gave up a couple of times. So, in summary a 3* Good Read from me.

Thanks to Netgalley and HarperCollins UK for the opportunity to preview.

★★★ 3.5 stars

How well do you know your loved ones and how far would you go to protect them?

A dark psychological thriller, THE KILLER INSIDE explores this very concept when Elliott, a primary school teacher, discovers his wife Anya may not be the woman he thought she was. Happily married, both are from vastly different backgrounds. Elliott was raised by his mother on a London council estate with his father in prison while Anya was the privileged - and maybe somewhat entitled - only child of Patrick and Julia. But both harbour guilty secrets.

Anya's parents adore Elliott and have always made him feel welcome. But a part of him always feels shut out as if he is not privy to the threefold strong unit that is Anya and her parents. So why is it Anya always goes running to them when something goes wrong? It is not uncommon for her to do so, leaving Elliott excluded and somewhat mystified. But Anya is the product of her parents' overindulgence, always giving her what she so desired and fixing any problems that she encountered. And it is a habit that has continued into her adulthood and marriage.

But Elliott has his own worries when he inadvertently makes an enemy of one of the dads at the school he teaches. Strange things begin to happen beyond Anya's distant behaviour as he is run off his bicycle and they are woken in the night by a brick being thrown through the window. Elliott wonders if Lee Bennett (the dad from the school) is behind it, having spent some time in prison he seemed the sort. But it's Anya's behaviour that puzzles me. If a brick was thrown through my window at 3am, I wouldn't be brushing it off, insisting that the police not be called and then promptly falling to sleep without a care while my husband is left sleepless to deal with it. I'd be frantic and unable to sleep. But Anya clearly didn't have the worries she claimed that plagued her. Of course Anya ran off to her parents, citing feeling unwell, where she stayed for the next several days.

Then one day Elliott decides to surprise Anya at work in London for lunch. But when he arrives he discovers she hasn't been there for at least a week with her employer granting her more time if needed during her "bereavement". What bereavement? Elliott is both puzzled and furious. What exactly is going on? What secrets is she keeping? Of course, her parents are privy to the entire spiel - why is he not surprised? Just how well does he know the woman he married?

Irene is a 73 year old widow living in Cambridge whose son Liam disappeared in 2003 without explanation beyond a postcard citing he "needed to sort his head out and don't try and find me". She hasn't heard anything from him since. Her worries intensify when her eldest son Michael neglects to visit as he usually does, and she hasn't heard from him for several weeks. In a silent panic, Irene decides to visit Michael's flat but upon arrival finds no response. She is directed to a free spirited woman called Rowan in an adjoining flat who may have some answers as to her son's whereabouts. But Rowan is worried too. She hasn't heard from Michael either. Her only clue is that he claimed he might finally know what happened to Liam.

Desperate for answers, Irene seeks Rowan's help in gaining access to Michael's flat upstairs. Inside, she finds nothing of real value apart from some receipts to a cafe in Casterbourne in Kent. Puzzled, Irene decides to take the train to Kent with a photo of Michael in the hope that someone somewhere has seen her son. But is she prepared for what she may find when she gets there?

Told primarily from the two perspectives of Elliott and Irene, we are also given a glimpse of the past with Liam in 2003 about halfway through. From Liam's narrative we are then given the remaining pieces that lead to his disappearance in 2003.

THE KILLER INSIDE is not entirely a slow burn as it is a slow starter, as for the first half of the book we are seemingly thoroughly confused as to how Elliott and Irene's stories even relate. Generally, for me, a book that takes this long to make sense is discarded long before it begins to. I can't say it is entirely engaging to begin with either because I really just wanted to smack Elliott for his naivete and strangle Anya for her pure selfishness. I felt more invested in Irene's story, rather than the saga that was Elliott and Anya, and yet we saw so little of her. However, once you reach that 50% mark, it all begins to fall into place and it's a race to the finish. I found it to be reminiscent of "Gone Girl" in which the first half uninteresting but the second half riveting.

Well-plotted throughout, despite the first half being slow and thoroughly confusing, THE KILLER INSIDE is somewhat addictive as the reader watches the story unfold in the same way one would witness a car crash - unable to look away.

My thoughts on THE KILLER INSIDE are as complex as the characters within it, but overall, once you hit that 50% mark it is a race to the end. My favourite character was Irene and I would have liked to see a little more of her. I really felt for her as her story unfolded. Elliott and Anya just did my head in. It is clear from the beginning that Anya is a psychopath. There is no other way to describe her. I couldn't understand what Elliott saw in her.

In some ways, it seems the reader knows the direction the story is taking. But then when all the secrets are finally revealed...where does that leave them all?

As secrets and lies are unraveled, loyalties are challenged as complex characters manipulate the outcome. Which begs the question - how well do we really know our loved ones?

I would like to thank #CassGreen, #NetGalley and #HarperCollinsUK for an ARC of #TheKillerInside in exchange for an honest review.

The thriller equivalent of an onion, layer upon layer of twistedness.
Every time I thought I knew where this novel was going, there was another twist.
Not particularly empathetic characters, but a fascinating story, hard to put down.

My thanks to Harper Collins and NetGalley for my ARC of The Killer Inside by Cass Green. I had previously read her thriller The Woman Next Door so had high expectations and...

Outstanding! What a psychological thriller this is. Two parallel story lines with no apparent connection. Elliott is married to Anya, a seemingly happy couple but both with dark secrets. Irene, a lonely lady - her husband is dead, son Liam disappeared in 2003 and now it appears that her other son Michael has committed suicide. Chapters switch from one storyline to the other, layers slowly unfurling. And then... one innocent location name - is that the link?

What do Julia and Patrick know about their daughters past that Elliott doesn't? What occurred in Elliot's past that he is so ashamed of? Did Michael really commit suicide?

A masterclass in suspense and menace as the plots intertwine and result in a stunning thriller of twists and turns and a horrifying reveal come the end.

Hats off to Cass Green for another pulse-racing, breathtaking thriller!