Loved this... kept me on my tenterhooks all the way through. I guessed who 'The Chief' was but his assistant could have been one of two... A couple of irritating bits when I wanted to scream at Heidi and/or Jason but on the whole a very gripping read.

Nicely written (a couple of typos) and definitely worth downloading...

I watched filthy rich on Netflix and then read this and noticed a lot of similarities. I enjoyed the book even though it was a bit of a slow burner. The writing was good and I will look for future books.

Thank you to NetGalley and Agora Books for allowing me to access this novel before its publication date, in return for an honest review. Rebecca Kelly has just firmly placed herself on my list of favourite authors. This book is a fantastic debut novel. I couldn’t turn the pages of the story fast enough! The plot thickens with the flash backs to previous years and back, building the tension and anticipation. The novel is extremely harrowing and you find yourself willing the victims to get the answers they desperately seek. I would highly recommend this to anyone who loves a psychological thriller, as this is brilliant.

I could not put this down ! wonderful characterisation of the girls, Poor Heidi with half forgotten memories of her childhood friend and her sister, truly scary book. The plot was tight with little room to escape what was happening. Good characters in the police force who I hope we meet again.

A real all nighter and a must read for fans of this genre

I have found this book hard to rate. It is somewhere between 4 and 5 star but in the lower quartile - hence 4 stars.
The book theme is about sick men and serious young child abuse so it seems totally inappropriate to say that I enjoyed reading the book.
The chapters hop between a slow revealing of what happened 15 years ago, Denise, the police DI, investigating now, Heidi, the survivor, now and the man following Heidi looking for vital evidence she has but has not been able to remember.
The book is very well written and certainly kept me hooked and wanting to read more and more.
I am not the best at working out 'whodunnit' but with this book I did find it pretty obvious who the 'insider' was. Also the man following Heidi was a 50/50 choice. I also found the ending somewhat abrupt and was looking for the typical '3 months later' epilogue but sadly only the acknowledgements followed.
Nevertheless this book is well worth reading.

*** ARC provided by Netgalley via the publisher in exchange for an honest review. ***

Great debut novel by Rebecca Kelly, easy to get into and quite a page-turner. Also, very apt at the moment with the Filthy Rich documentary highlighting paedophile rings with influential people pulling all the strings.

I like the way it was written, the flashbacks were done well and avoiding being jarring or confusing. I’ll definitely be looking out for this authors next novel.

I’m proudly announcing that we have a brilliant debut author on the board and I’m looking forward to read more works of her!

This is dark, intense, gripping, heart wrenching, impactful, emotional story includes sensitive and disturbing issues. Some parts of the book are truly moving but they were also hard to absorb but the pure realistic story telling mixed with the emotional depth of friendship bound serves so well. The well-crafted characterization helps you to root for the narrators’ stories.

Especially the sad, heartbreaking, poignant side of Heidi’s story who is a trauma survivor, brutally attacked and left to death fifteen years ago, her bottled up guilt feelings because of being the only survivor after her best friend Nina has been killed and her little sister Anna has been kidnapped and she loses the fragments of her memories to help the officers find the perpetrator. She still tries too hard but nothing comes out: just a big blank!

After the striking and earth shattering incident on 2001, detective Denise Gilzeen still remains in touch with Heidi and after 15 years later the case reopens because the parts Heidi blocked starts to resurface. Her memories keep coming back and she starts to assist to the officers to solve the case. Of course as the secrets come out, Heidi finds herself in a dilemma: what if remembering the details about night bring out something so dangerous that may ruin her life forever. What if her involvement escalated a violent situation? What if some doors opens to the realities may be remained closed for everyone’s sake?
Story is told by detective and Heidi’s narrations, going back and forth between 2001 and 2016. I mostly loved 2001 parts: Heidi and best friend Nina’s friendship. Both Heidi’s mud pie, adorable sister Anna and quirky and angsty Nina were likable and remarkable characters. It was so hard to read their parts and impossible not truly care for them.

Of course there was a twist waiting for us with open hands and I must say: it captured by my spidey spider senses. It was a little predictable. But when you find out how the story concluded you may realize: it was the best ending you may get. It was really challenging, intense, provocative and depressing story. But it was genuinely talks to your heart and the pacing, progression keep your interest intact. It was riveting, intriguing and well-written.

Special thanks to NetGalley and Agora Books for sharing this remarkably unputdownable ARC with me in exchange my honest review. I also have to congratulate Rebecca Kelly for her skillful, captivating writing.

Monstrous Souls is a fast-paced, gritty and captivating read with an ending many will not predict.
Heidi, having lost her memory 15 years ago in an attack that left her best friend dead, and younger sister missing, is now starting to put the pieces back together as memories emerge.

If you like to be constantly surprised as you read, then this is one to add to your reading list.

What a fantastic book!. A sad story about murder,abuse and betrayal. So well written and engrossing that I could not put it down and finished it very quickly.
An amazing author who has written a story of murder and abuse and all that goes with it sympathetically . Brilliant read

Review will go live on 25th June at the link below.

Despite the absolute garbage fire that is the UK at the moment, one thing that does not seem to be suffering is the excellent supply of new books. One such is Monstrous Souls, a tense and twisty thriller by Rebecca Kelly.

To say I enjoyed this book is, perhaps, the wrong word as it has some quite disturbing content once the mystery behind Heidi’s attack is slowly revealed – more like I was riveted by it. There is the central plot of the murder of one girl, a near-fatal attack on another and the abduction of a third, but there is also a hugely intricate plot surrounding organised child abuse and trafficking which is sometimes hard to read, but is handled in such a away as to emphasise the despicable nature of it without it being too horrifying for the reader – most of the horror is filled in by your own imagination anyway.

Although this delicate subject provides the backbone of the novel, the friendship between Nina and Heidi, in contrast, is intimate and beautifully captured. It provokes memories of younger days, secret hideouts, long summer days and silly in-jokes and makes what happens to these girls all the more tragic.

I really liked Heidi as a character – although her tendency is to live quietly due to her experiences, she has been able to overcome horrific circumstances in her own way. The descriptions of her life crashing down as she begins to remember some of the details of her ordeal are saddening to read.

Heidi’s voice is interwoven in the book with that of an anonymous person who is watching her, someone who has a vested interest in seeing that she doesn’t remember too much. This is a great device and these passages help us to see more fully what is going on – but still, the final moments are a complete shock.

This book is an excellent and gripping debut novel and I would be thrilled to read more from Rebecca Kelly.

This book really surprised me and spooked me out in places. It's got a brilliant plot with relatable characters, who you really feel for. I love the main character Heidi and I was rooting for her the whole way through. It's a gripping, unputdownable read with twists you won't see coming. Highly recommend Rebecca Kelly, she's a great author.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for providing me with a copy of this novel in exchange for an honest review. It is currently set to be published in June 2020.

The concept behind "Monstrous Souls" is very good and I was really looking forward to reading this novel, because I love cold case investigations and stories about best friends, but the story disappointed me in more than one way.
First of all, the characters are sorely bidimensional, even Heidi, who is the protagonist: none of them does or even mentions anything that is not related to the investigation. They do not act like real people living real lives and feeling real emotions, they feel like walking and talking plot-progression mechanisms. Very annoying! I was not able to relate to any of them. The only character who gained some empathy from me is the secondary villain - Heidi's stalker - who is incidentally also the only character who undergoes any sort of personal development along the course of the book. All the other characters remain unchanged from beginning to end.
Besides, several characters behave in the most illogical way for no apparent reason. The only explanation I can find is "plot requirements". For instance, why does the secondary villain stalk Heidi and kill the people she talks to, but doesn't try to kill Heidi in the first place? If they want to shut her up and prevent her from bringing up new evidence, the most logical course of action would be to try and kill her. It's not like they're squeamish or have any respect for human life, anyway.
Last but not least, the bit that made me put the book down in disgust: one of the characters, Mark, who used to work in a care home for children - and thus is supposed to be someone who *cares* about children's wellbeing and feels *responsible* towards the ones in his charge - one night goes upstairs "just to check everything is okay", catches a grown man (a friend of the manager's, who had no possible reason to be there over night) coming out of a 6-year-old girl's bedroom. So what does Mark do? He lets the man leave undisturbed after making a "ridiculous excuse" (Mark's own words), then he (Mark) goes into the room, finds the 6-year-old girl crying, she tells him that the man has raped her (which means that she trusts Mark *a lot*) and how does Mark repay such trust? By NOT immediately reporting the incident to the police, NOT calling an ambulance and NOT getting any medical help for the poor child--or any forensic assistance for the collection of evidence. His justification? "I didn't have time that night. It was late. I had somewhere else to be." What kind of monster would just turn his back on such a crime? By not saying anything, he allows a flourishing paedophile organization to continue abusing and murdering children for the following 15 years. Years later, when questioned by the police, he even dares to say "I always wondered if this would come back to haunt me one day."
As for the writing style of this novel, I found it too wordy: there are more descriptions than actions, and twice as much space is devoted to Heidi's whining than to her actually doing something.
Several times the "Show, don't tell" principle flies out the window.
Overall, the narration is annoyingly slow-paced for the first two thirds of the novel, then it finally picks up its rhythm towards the end, but not before boring the reader to tears for the first 170 pages or so.
More than a few typos and the occasional grammar slip-up ("Mum has taken Anna and *I*") also had a negative impact on my reading experience.

A very twisted mystery going on but who is to blame. Rebecca Kelly keeps you guessing to the bitter end, and when I thought I had a grasp I was wrong...

Quite slow to start but builds into a unputdownable read. With an ending I didn't see coming, I would highly recommend this book.

Thanks to NetGalley and the author for the opportunity to read this book.

A gripping read. A little sketchy in places and I felt like where the author didn't know how to explain something, she simply skipped past it. There were gaps in the story - going straight from the incident to 15 years later. Not much explanation about what had happened in between. And no explanation about what the main character was doing now. The background could have done with being fleshed out a bit more. Heard more about her work, her friends etc - as it was there was little or no information about her. A little predictable too, but all the same, a good read, dealing with an emotive issue.

A fantastic debut novel. Thanks to Netgalley for a copy on return for an honest review.
This was a step away from my normal genre, I tend to read YA and fantasy, but this was a very pleasant break from the norm. The pace of this psychological thriller was fast and there was plenty of action. The story is not only told from different perspectives but also across different time frames. As the protagonist, Heidi begins to remember the traffic events if that day, we too travel back in time and see what happened from a 13 year old Heidi. The relationship between the two girls is believable and at times gut wrenching. The topic is a difficult topic but it's handled with sensitivity and just the right amount of detail. Much is left to the imagination again echoing Heidi's own situation and her returning memories.

This was a quick read and left me satisfied at the end. There were some twists and turns which did take a little figuring out and things draw together nicely at the end. It's not the ending some might want but I think it was the right ending. It felt real. There is no dwelling on the Afters, and what ifs and I like that, the reader is left to imagine for themselves what happens to the characters, to sum up their lives would not have done them justice. A recommended summer read and an author to watch out for.

Heidi can’t remember what happened to her, her sister Anna and her friend Nina when they were children. But years later it’s all starting to come back to her in bits and pieces. There are people who are very nervous about exactly what she will remember. This is a story that brings out the worst in people, things that we don’t talk about but have been there in the background for years, covered up, with children too frightened to say anything, knowing they were unlikely to be believed.

This is told as flash backs to 2001 and back to 2016. The friendship between Heidi and Nina shows the depth of their feelings for each other, and also their fear that runs through the whole book. It is very well written, researched and unfortunately all too believable. The author writes really well, making it a moving and fast paced read, and not giving the ending that we would all have hoped for. However a really good read, and I’d definitely read whatever the author writes next.

Thanks to netgalley and the publishers for an ARC in return for an honest review.

A rather frustrating read. The twists and turns seemed rather ridiculous at times, particularly when Heidi gets chased with the vital evidence, reaches safety, then goes out into the open again!

WOW this book was just such a good read, it is very well written and the author tackles a delicate subject incredibly well. It’s written in a way that makes you aware of the tragedies and awfulness of what the story is about but without the gorey details which some readers find off putting. It’s written with a gentle approach so that you know what is going on without it being spelt out for you. I thought I had the story figured out and who the bad guys were but boy did it throw a shocker in to it towards the end. I won’t go too much in to the storyline as that’s what the blurb is there for, but I would highly recommend reading this, I don’t often give 5 stars and it’s only the few rare great books that I feel are deserving of five stars, this is one of them.

This was a very gripping, fast read. Although the twists weren't crazy, it was really enjoyable and cleverly written. I love books that are written from different perspectives and time frames, so this was right up my street!
It was a challenging read too, due to the subject matter but wasn't graphic about it thankfully.
I will definitely look out for this author in the future..