Creepy and kept me hooked. I enjoyed this book quite a lot and didn't want to put it down.
The epitome of suspense in places, leaving you wondering what will happen next,

Hannah’s best friend persuades her to join a dating app and she meets Alex. He appears to be the man of her dreams as they seem to share all the same interests. She has had a very troubled childhood in foster care and takes her job as a social worker very seriously. Hannah soon falls in love with Alex and he with her. She thinks he is perfect but her friends don’t agree as it soon becomes clear that he is very controlling. Hannah starts receiving threatening messages and realises that someone doesn’t want their relationship to work. This is a cleverly written psychological thriller, with plenty of tension, twists and turns and a jaw dropping ending, it was a book I couldn’t put down and really enjoyed.
Thanks to Netgalley and Bookouture for giving me the opportunity to read and review this book.

Thank you #netgalley and #bookouture for the arc of this book.

As the saying goes, love is blind and our main character Hannah is just that, blinded by love.

Hannah has been unlucky in love. She falls fast and hard and it never works out. Everything else in her life is going well, she has a small yet cheery apartment, a job in social work that is fulfilling and a small group of best friends. All that's missing is a great love. That's where Alex comes into the picture.

They have everything in common. They want three kids, a yellow labrador and weekends away in Devon.
As their relationship progresses others see Alex a different way. What Hannah sees as love and kindness, her friends see as possessiveness and controlling. Hannah ignores every red flag and shrugs it away because she's in love and Alex is perfect.
When Alex and Hannah go away one weekend, Hannah receives a text from her best friend Jas that contains a disturbing picture. Hannah starts to realise there is something not quite right about her relationship and this time she can't just shrug it away. It all ends not with a fizz, but with a bang!

My goodness this book was hard to get through! Hannah severely annoyed the crap out of me, she has to be the most annoying female in any book I have read. For someone with her background and the line of work she chose, I feel she should have been smarter with her decisions. Apart from this, the ending was great. I was glad I decided to finish the book.

A good psychological thrillers but Hannah really annoyed me and I started to wonder if she was just stupid or really was naive. I found the characters difficult to connect with and the story unbelievable. I also thought the ending was ridiculous. Out of the frying pan into the fire!! I did finish the book but it was a slog.

This book was amazing!! I stayed up till the early hours of the morning just to finish this book! Then when i had finished i couldn't sleep because I couldn't get over the end! Such a great twist i didn't see coming!

FIRST DATE is a psychological thriller by Sue Watson.

She was in love and love is blind…

Hannah, a thirty-six-year- old social worker is looking for Mr. Right, after the horrible breakup last year, she is encouraged by her boss, Jas, to go on an online dating site, to meet a new man.

All she wants is a home, a family, three kids and a Labrador. Simple wish list!

It is not everyday you meet someone who wants everything you do. She’s been waiting her whole life to meet a man like Alex. But he’s been waiting too. And once he has her, he’ll never let her go…

She meets her perfect man, Alex on a dating site, and discovers on their first date they share a lot of the same likes and wishes. Alex, a lawyer, is gorgeous, sexy, intelligent and funny. He does everything to please her. They were made for each other.

Hannah has come from an unstable childhood growing up in foster care, and is now content with her sweet, little, messy apartment and her satisfying job as a social worker. She worries that she might never fall in love.

Hannah’s friends aren’t so sure about Alex. But Hannah thinks he’s perfect.

But it isn’t long before happiness dwindles and darkness creeps in.

This was a gripping and suspenseful psychological thriller about dark obsession and internet dating. Well written with the suspense level increasing until the surprise ending.

Many thanks to the author, Bookouture and Netgalley for my digital copy.

This one fell a little flat for me. Hannah was not relatable and a little bit too naive. It ended up a DNF on my shelf.

The First Date is an interesting book. Simple writing makes reading easier. The well-arranged plot makes this psycho-thriller storytelling manage to haunt my mind all the time.

What I love about this book is the presence of very detailed characters. Each character has their very own story and reason for existence. Hannah is desperate for a perfect life partner. Her co-workers being the support character combining well in this story. Alex is the most prominent character in this story. A very annoying psycho boyfriend character. I feel burdened with Alex. Whoops! Not going to be the spoiler!

The transition from one chapter to another is very smooth. Towards the middle chapters of the book, I became confused and did not know who I should believe. One more thing that makes me like this story is, the story is more to the reality of today. Not everything you see is the truth. There are too many people walking around with a serious mental illness. Read it, then you will know it.

In conclusion, very interesting reading and perhaps relatable to the experience of some of us. Successfully glued my attention and at the same time became one of my best readings in 2020 for me. Highly recommended to those who like psycho-thriller, and there is more or less thrill like reading The Silent Patient.

The dislikes? I couldn't find one part to dislike the story. It's like having the adrenaline rush all the time while reading it. I enjoy reading this so much. I rate this book as 5 out of 5.

Our opinion may vary, you have yours and, I have mine!

Thank you, NetGalley for this eARC in exchange for my honest review.

Another great psychological thriller from Sue Watson. I enjoyed the characters, never knowing which ones I could fully trust. The final twist at the end is fantastic!

I picked this book since it was highly recommended to me. I don’t regret that but this book was really slow in the beginning. It didn’t pick up for me until 75% into the book. I didn’t care for Hannah at all. She repeatedly ignored all the red flags which was way too much. It became a game for me to see what excuses she would give to Alex. The twist at the end wasn’t too shocking and I was a bit disappointed about that. I actually finished the book for that twist. I actually thought the ending to be sad for all parties involved. Overall, it was an okay suspenseful book with a predictable ending.
I received this Arc from the publisher and Netgalley in exchange for my honest review and opinion.

I found this one a little slow. It was more the half way through before the creepy factor really got going. I also had it figured out about then...

This book was crazy... the ending shocked me. I am still processing. I really struggled with being so upset with the main character at times, yet still rooting for her all the same. Great read!

I don’t know any other way to put this other than to say this read like a bad Lifetime movie to me....
At about 18% I realized this wasn’t for me, so I jumped to the 80% mark and finished from there.
I didn’t miss much.
It gets a second star for the very last chapter. That was cheeky good.

ARC provided by NetGalley

I found this one hard to connect with and my frustration with Hannah just grew and grew she was just too naive for me I meant how many red flags does one girl need!

Having said that I have read other books by Sue which I have enjoyed so it hasn't put me off.

Initially I found this story slow going and I found I didn't really connect with it.
I did persevere with it as I had enjoyed previous books by this author and I was glad I did. The last third was much better and had a great twist at the end.

This book was saved by the ending which was unexpected.. Hannah annoyed me because she had so many red flags where Alex was concerned and she ignored them. I also got caught up in the fact that as a Social Worker her sense of confidentiality was rather lax.
On the whole it was a pleasant read and a salutatory lesson regarding internet dating.
Thank you Netgalley and Bookouture for the opportunity to read this book and give my unbiased opinion

Unbelievably creepy but a darn good read. A real page turner with a shocking twist at the end. I loved every single page.

This book was okay. It took me awhile to read because it was so predictable. I found myself skipping over many parts of the book. It just felt like a lot of repetitiveness. While I did enjoy the extra plot twist at the end, it was just a little too extra.

Hannah is a bit naive when it comes to love, especially when it comes to her first date with Alex. Her breakup with Tom was long overdue and she meets Alex online, as many happy couples do. She is a well liked and very sweet 38 year old woman looking for love. It all just fits like puzzle pieces on the first date. He's handsome and successful with a nice home. He's the package....With a past.
Hannah ignored every sign that she should run! She didn't do what normal people would do in specific scenarios. Does she not see his creepy side?? She comes off as totally clueless and allows unacceptable behavior from Alex like a lost puppy dog.
Thank god the last 15-20% of the novel picks up and turns this lackluster story into a thrilling, riveting read. 3.5 stars. Quick and easy read, I'll be looking forward to the next one by Sue Watson for sure!

First Date is a bit of a thriller, but it is more a playbook of what NOT to do when you are dating. Hannah seems to be desperate and needy. She falls immediately for Alex. While I was reading I could not believe that she could not see the red flags. They were everywhere. At the same time, she was throwing up a few herself. They were almost a perfect couple in some ways. It was really clear from early on that he was just not right. Neither was she. The book went on as Alex worked to further and further separate Hannah from everyone in her life except him. Hannah sees it and then ignores it.

The ending throws in a bunch of backstory and explanation that would have been better had it been slowly revealed throughout. And then the final little is thrown in to be the "twist" that publishers seemed to want added. This was a cautionary dating tale. C'mon, people! Don't date until you like yourself!