A sophisticated, ingenious and complex thriller, Emma Curtis’ Invite Me In is an addictive chiller that will keep readers guessing.

Eliza Curran is a woman you cannot help but envy. With her wealthy husband who worships the ground she walks on, two healthy children and a stunning home, Eliza seems to have it all. Her friends and family would love to swap places with her and spend a day in her designer shoes, however, Eliza’s life isn’t the picture perfect fairytale everyone assumes it to be. There is certainly nothing to envy about the woman who is trapped in an unhealthy marriage to a man who behind the scenes is controlling, stifling and who makes her long to break free. Desperate to escape her gilded cage, Eliza taken in a lodger, little realising that her already fragile world is going to be turned on its head!

Dan Jones is charming, clever and compassionate. As the weeks go by, he becomes less of a tenant and more friend of the family who becomes a much-loved member of the household. But was Eliza wrong to take Dan at face value? Is he kind-hearted friend or dangerous foe? With Eliza weighed down by her own demons and secrets, she quickly realizes that she needs to tread carefully and watch her step becomes one false move is all it takes for her world to come tumbling down…

Just who has Eliza let into her house? With nowhere to hide and nobody she can trust, will Eliza end up paying the harshest price of all for letting a stranger in?

Tense, twisty and terrifying, Emma Curtis’ Invite Me In is a book that shouldn’t be read in an empty house or at night. Emma Curtis amps up the menace and foreboding in a nail-biting thriller that will leave readers with their nerves shred and their nails bitten to the elbow.

A cleverly plotted page-turner that will send chill after chill down readers’ spines, Emma Curtis’ Invite Me In is a brilliantly crafted thriller that is hard to put down.

'Invite Me In' by Emma Curtis is a book that I was really looking forward to reading. A psychological suspense thriller by an author who certainly knows how to keep the reader guessing. Emma Curtis certainly achieves this in 'Invite Me In'.
Eliza Curran, to the outside world, seems to have it all. Her house is fantastic, two children and French Au pair Isabel there, on hand in what looks like a life we would all wish for. On the flip side, her husband Martin is disabled confined to a wheelchair after an accident and his public front is the total opposite to his private one. Her life is not what it seems and when they gain a new tenant,Dan, in one of their properties to let Eliza finds herself increasingly attracted to him. As everything in Eliza's world begins to spin out of control the question is - can Dan be trusted? Is it all a coincidence?
One thing I can say, when I pick up an Emma Curtis book I can guarantee an excellent read. This book, ticks every box for a scintillating read. She has blended multiple elements together which include, romance, psychological illness, secrets mystery, murder and domestic violence too. These all keep the reader guessing throughout. We discover Martin has something on Eliza that keeps a hold over her. In fact there are so many secrets it is somewhat of a spiders web. One leads to another and so on. This builds up to a cresendo as the story unfolds and the secrets begin to be revealed.
The characters are all real and flawed in some way or another, Eliza is a woman who has spent her life fighting her own monsters as well as this life in which she lives now. Every single person is as real as can be and that results in an immersive story that rings true. Even Martin's sister, has adolised her brother and knows how he is really but choses not to acknowledge the behaviour. There are a lot of siblings in the world today who do the exact same thing. I must admit to becoming frustrated with a few of these characters.
It is a book I was almost addicted to,I read it pretty quickly and felt the conclusion wrapped it all up very well.
Thanks to Anne Cater of Random Things Tours and Transworld Digital for the book and my place on the tour.

Thanks to the publishers for sharing this one. I really liked the writing style and will check out more from this author. My full review appears on Weekend Notes.

This book was intriguing from the first chapter and kept me reading to get to the end. The description of each character allowed a good picture to be created for each of them in my mind. I also had feelings about certain characters, I particularly couldn't stand the nanny.

However, I felt the twist was fairly predictable from about half way through the book. For this reason I have marked it down to 4 stars. I like a shock at the end of the book but I had already worked out what was happening much too early.

An enjoyable read and one that I would recommend.

That was a very satisfying read, one of the best of this type of psychological thrillers I’ve read for some time. Meet the Curran family - Martin, Eliza and the children, Lucas 6 and Aurora 3. They live in a stunning but soulless concrete marvel in a good part of town. The word ‘perfect’ is not mentioned though. With good reason. Martin is wheelchair bound, he has been for a number of years and the house is also therefore wheelchair friendly. You see Martin might have a disability but he hates asking for help. In fact he is out to prove he can manage just as well, or even better, than before and can still provide for his family. Martin’s hubris , however, will be his weakness!

It’s not quite clear what Martin does for a living but he does make quite a bit of money. The problem is that Martin is also a controlling and manipulative bully and Eliza is thoroughly miserable. She would leave him but he knows a few secrets about her that could see her prevented from getting custody of the children. They also have an au pair - the young and delectable Isabel, French of course. The couple is good friends with the Gordon’s - Pete is Martin’s best friend and an architect (he designed the concrete monolith, Winterbourne) and Ali is Martin’s sister. Eliza manages the couples various rental properties and it is at the newest of these that Dan Jones enters the mix. Dan blunders into the Curran’s newest rental before it is quite ready but clearly wants to rent it.

Dan is the match that blows this family up! It all seemed so simple and straightforward to start with. I was thinking I knew what was going to happen. I was wrong! Nothing ended up being as it seemed. This was so well done. The characters were so well developed, each layer being slowly peeled away. My goodness, these people had quite the secrets and hidden depths and in the end none of them were particularly likeable but oh my, they were so interesting. I was transfixed reading this story as it lurched from disaster to worse disaster.

The story was tightly plotted and another thing I really liked about it was that it seemed so ‘adult’. What I mean by that is there was no cheesy, cringeworthy dialogue. It all seemed so real and realistic and plausible. These were people I could imagine actually knowing. Apart from Martin who was a nasty piece of work although he did reserve his worst for his wife. In private. If you like psychological thrillers, do yourself a favour and check this book out. Many thanks to Netgalley and Random House UK, Transworld Publishers for the free ARC which I reviewed voluntarily and honestly.

4.5 stars rounded up.

I’m a huge fan of Emma Curtis’ writing, and I loved her latest thriller, Invite Me In. It is a slow-burn; domestic thriller, and I loved how Emma Curtis revealed more about her characters as the novel progressed. I wanted to get to the bottom of who they all were. I wanted to know what secrets they were hiding in their past.

To many, Eliza seems to have the perfect life. But everything is not quite as it seems behind closed doors. This idea has been explored before in psychological thrillers, but in Invite Me In, Emma Curtis has created a cast of intriguing characters. Her characters always make her books come to life, and it’s what I love the most about her writing. I think readers may struggle to feel sympathetic towards Eliza initially, but my opinion changed as I was reading because she has everything. But you get a real sense that she is trapped in her marriage to her husband, Martin, and you can see how desperate she is to get away from him and start a new life.

The tension is turned up a notch when Dan, Eliza’s new tenant, enters. Eliza falls head over heels for him, and feelings between them begin to grow. But how can Eliza leave her controlling husband? What if he was to find out what is happening between her and Dan? I had no idea how he would react if he ever did, and this made me feel fearful for Eliza. It made me wonder if it would be possible if Eliza could have a life with Dan.

The tension really beings to pick up in the latter half of the book, and Eliza is faced with an unprecedented situation. I had no idea how she was going to get herself out of it. In this part of the novel, we learn more about Eliza’s backstory, and there are some shocking revelations about her that may just seal her fate. It made for such tense reading as the book raced towards its finale.

I really enjoyed this book; Emma Curtis has created another fantastic novel. As with all of Emma Curtis’ books, I struggled to put it down once I started Invite Me In.

My Thoughts; I love a thriller that grips you straight away and just doesn’t let go and this book did exactly that, the twists and turns just didn’t stop!

We’re following Eliza who is currently renovating their latest house ready to put on the market, with just 2 weeks to go until it’s ready a stranger turns up at the door claiming he was looking for somewhere to rebuild and could he be cheeky and have a quick look before it gets put on the open market, reluctantly Eliza agrees, knowing it will make her late, knowing that Martin won’t be happy and that she will pay for it when she gets home.

Martin is in wheelchair after a horrific accident a few years ago, which sometimes makes him feel inadequate as a person and a father so has to assert his dominance in other ways normally using his words and his fists, he like Eliza to be the perfect little wife and he likes to know where she is at all times even going as far as putting a tracker on her phone…

Things start falling apart when Dan moves into the apartment and both he and Eliza start having feelings for each other, but the snag is that Dan is also seeing Eliza’s au pair to “keep up appearances”

The secret about Dan and Eliza comes out at a family party after Eliza who is a recovering alcoholic has far too many drinks, kisses Dan in one of the rooms and gets caught by the Au Pair!

What follows is tense, gripping and a story that leaves you not knowing which way to turn but staying strapped in for the ride because you just need to know where it’s going!

There was so many layers to the story that every time we peel one away there’s another one to decipher!

This is the second book by Emma that I’ve read and the second 5 star read!

Well worth a read to any fans of a psychological thriller that is near impossible to put down!

Book tour stop! Today I’m delighted to be the host for Invite Me In, a psychological thriller written by Emma Curtis.

First thing first, let me thank Anne and the publisher, Random House UK, Transworld Publishers, for providing me with an e-copy of this book. Much obliged *hat tip*

READ MY REVIEW

Cover: Intriguing. It caught my attention right away, like good covers ought to do.

Every once in a while, I like to read a good thriller. It’s one of those genres I cherry-pick my way through, because of detective overabundance (yawn tbh) and the narrative structure that often reads the same.

This doesn’t happen with Invite Me In. The detective element is present, but on the side. Who we’re following is the MC, Eliza, and the slow destruction of her entire life. It’s like watching dominoes fall, the inevitability present in every page: whether you’re rooting for her as I did or not, the outcome won’t change, but maybe, after all is said and done, Eliza is going to be in a better place.

To be quite honest, her starting point doesn’t look that good anyway, at least to me. Dan’s appearance is the catalyst, true, and long overdue.

Character-wise, I appreciate Eliza’s growth. From point A to point B, she matures, shedding layers of naivety along the way. Sometimes her actions seem a little too impulsive, sometimes I just don’t agree with her, but she kept me glued to the pages regardless, a testimony of Curtis’ talent. I have to tip my hat in her direction, because wow. This is how you write a good thriller.

Curtis’ prose is engaging and clean, it flows without hitches. As I already mentioned in my previous reviews, only a skilled writer can pull off a first person POV that doesn’t trip over I+action; Curtis is that writer.

Chapeaux.

I really felt for the main character of this book. It was sad that she felt she was trapped, although there were times I was screaming for her not to trust people. It was close to what could really happen and that made it all the more real. I'd love to read more from this author

I just did not connect to this read, I found it dull and not very engaging. I did like the direction Curtis eventually takes this and thought the threads are tied together well but I found the in between boring and not exciting.

A really great read, sucked me in at the beginning and threw me out spent at the end, very twisty and turny came to a satisfactory conclusion, with a twist I didn't see coming, loved it

The characters were so unlikeable but in a fantastic way (which is really rare for me to say) this is the first time I've come across this author but definitely not the last. The writing is gripping.

Invite me In by Emma Curtis was one I struggled to enjoy. Emma did a great job in depicting unlikeable characters and you couldn’t really trust that any of the accounts was actually true. This was spoiled a bit for me with Eliza’s apparent immaturity and knee jerk actions that increasingly veered into being far fetched. I didn’t really feel that coercive control or alcoholism were handled particularly skilfully but it’s always good to raise awareness of both and Emma does do this. Overall it was a decent whodunnit-type read. Three and a half stars

Thanks to Netgalley and Random House UK for providing this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Eliza is married to paraplegic Martin. They have 2 young kids, a big custom house, an au pair and plenty of money. But Martin is abusive and Eliza has had enough so when Dan shows up at their rental flat, wanting to be their new tenant and showing interest in Eliza, she is interested too and her life starts to unravel.

I think this was my third book from the author and it was the best by far. I really enjoyed it. It was a quick read and I had no idea who I could trust, so it kept me guessing. The ending was solid. One of the better books I have read lately.

What a brilliant book this was , enjoyed it from the start to finish . Loved the main character , what a strong lady and it showed how easy it is to get into abusive relationships. Lots of twists and turns in this book and very tense all the way through . I’d highly recommend this book and give it 10 stars if I could

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House UK for this arc in exchange for an honest review.

This book was easy to get straight into with a present narrative which flowed well, making it easy to read and pick up and put down, without having to keep referring back.
The plot was gripping and twisty right to the end.

All the ingredients needed for a great book - I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Dark, Tense Suspense….
The reality is often glossed over as we will see in this suspenseful, dark page turning read with a gradual mounting of often unbearable tension, twists that you may not see coming and a continual sense of dread. The storyline is realistically drawn as are the characters and the darker side of human nature. Compulsive reading.

Thanks netgalley fir giving me the opportunity to read an early copy of this book, I loved it.
Eliza had everything, an amazing house, two beautiful children, but everything is not always enough.
Eliza was a alcholic, her husband Martin was disabled.
Martin watched Eliza all the time, he was.very controlling, and Eliza was always worried that if she started drinking Martin would take the children from her.
She accepted her fate until she met Dan, and let him into her life.
He changed everything that Eliza had in her life, and life got steadily worse.
Great story could not put down.

My goodness, this was a thriller with a touch of class. Intrigue a plenty and all believable. The dialogue between the characters was spot on. Normally I prefer a more full-on thriller but this was more subtle and it just kept you absolutely hooked. Eliza the main character reminded me of Alice in The Archers when she had an outburst after a drinking session. But who could blame her turning to drink being married to Ironside's evil twin? What a cold and uncaring individual he was whilst to the outside world a devoted husband and father. When Dan shows up it's no wonder Eliza takes a shine to him, a man who seems to offer what she lacks in her realtionship with her husband. Things aren't what they seem though and soon Eliza's life falls apart. It's a five star review from me because intrigue kept me racing through the pages.

Thank you to Netgalley for an Arc of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Wow, what a fabulous read. A tense psychological thriller. Full of suspense, twists and turns. A gripping read.