Don’t Turn Around – Book Review #dontturnaround #jessicabarry

Hey all! Third book review of the week. A gripping thriller Don’t Turn Around by Jessica Barry.

The riveting follow up to Jessica Barry’s debut Freefall—a controversial, of-the-moment thriller about two women fighting for their right to live. 

322 miles of road. 6 hours. 2 strangers. 1 killer. Too many secrets.

Midnight. Cait Monaghan and Rebecca McRae are on a desolate road that slices through the New Mexican desert. They’ve never met before tonight.  Both have secrets to protect. Both of their lives are in danger.  

When a truck pulls up fast behind them, they assume it’s punk teenagers or run-of-the-mill road rage, but it soon becomes clear that whoever is driving the truck is hunting them for sport—and they are out to draw blood.  

As the miles unspool and the dangers mount, the pasts they’ve worked so hard to keep buried have come back to haunt them.  Someone wants one of them dead. But which one?  And given the lives the two women have been leading, that someone could be almost anyone.

If Cait and Rebecca are going to survive, they’ll have to learn to trust one another—and themselves. But trust is a costly business, and they’ve both paid the price before. . . .

No. of pages :- 317 pages

Date published :- June 2020

Genre:- Political Thriller/ Women’s Fiction

Jessica Barry is a pseudonym for an American author who grew up in a small town in Massachusetts and was raised on a steady diet of library books and PBS.

She attended Boston University, where she majored in English and Art History, before moving to London in 2004 to pursue an MA from University College London.

She lives with her husband, Simon, and their two cats, Roger Livesey and BoJack Horseman.

This is the first book I have read from this author. The plot line, particularly this opening line caught my eye.

322 miles of road. 6 hours. 2 strangers. 1 killer. Too many secrets.

The story starts with Cait Monaghan picking up Rebecca McRae from her residence and the two women are on their way to Albuquerque, New Mexico, driving through the midnight. Both the women have some secrets–Cait was raped by a musician named Jake and had published an article as a part of #MeToo movement, only to be criticized by the politician Patrick McRae and was faced with bullies. Rebecca on the other hand is the wife of an upcoming politician Patrick McRae. She seemed to be having a perfect married life but then she felt shadowed by the political campaign of her husband, as he is dreaming of becoming a senator.

But that fateful night, someone was following behind them, with an intention of killing one of them. Which one of them is it?

So here are the things I liked about the book.

• The book is divided into past and present, told from the perspectives of Cait and Rebecca. So we would know what each of the female characters were going through before they started this journey to Albuquerque, New Mexico, which is the past. The present always starts with how many miles both the women are on the way to Albuquerque.
• Towards the middle part and the ending was good.
• The author somehow managed to make the reader gripped and hooked into the story. It was actually very interesting.
• The author also in the story deals with the issue of abortion, which seemed to be the sensitive topic in America.
• The story is also realistic in some ways. The marriage that Rebecca is going through because of her husband’s political career and how it had affected their marriage. Cait’s suffering as she was going through bullying online about the article she wrote about the musician. The emotions and feelings that each of these women are going through is realistic.
• The part about how the women are going through with a man trailing after them, the anxiety and terror that each women is feeling is realistic to me.

Now the things I didn’t like about the book.

The first few parts were a bit boring to me.

Overall, this is a good psychological thriller, that will grip you and also a bit emotional as well. Worth four stars for me!