When we meet her she’s living with her friends Mel and Will, hiding from whatever has happened to her. I do love a psychological thriller with multiple points of view and here we are treated to a fabulously twisty tale that revolves around Karin who has a secret past. If you enjoy your psychological thrillers, I highly recommend giving Keep Your Friends Close a read. Ms Taylor successfully interwove complex threads which then came together at the end as Karin finally found who her friends really were. Who really was looking out for her best interest? I mistrusted everyone, even Karin herself as Keep Your Friends Close reaches it’s climatic end.
The deeper I delved into Karin’s life, the more confused my emotions got. It built a perfect picture for me, inspiring my imagination for those fictitious places in the familiar locale and these characters I was reading about. There is a poetic feel to Ms Taylor’s descriptions but it’s not obtrusive. Living just outside Leeds and having spent a few years living in Lancaster, I felt totally immersed in the familiar backdrop of these two places that have formed part of me.
I loved the local references to Leeds and Morecambe. Karin is a woman of secrets with a past she doesn’t want to share with her man and the more I read, I could see why. When I started Keep Your Friends Close, I was unnerved from the start. *My thanks to HarperCollins for providing me with a copy of this book* Taylor got things spot-on when she penned this novel, and if you’re a fan of psychological thrillers clouded in dark secrets, this may just be the novel for you. Would I recommend this novel? Absolutely! I flew through it in two-sittings the pacing is perfect, there was never any point when I wished the plot would hurry up and move along. She wishes she’d handled things differently told the truth from the beginning because now it’s too late – now she’s no longer living, but surviving, as the past is closing in! You get a real sense of desperation from Karin, this need to do all that she can to keep her secret. I think it brings something different, with regards to the secret that’s being kept, Karin’s past in particular, and her passion for her cause, were real highlights for me. I’d be lying if I said there wasn’t a few moments where things got a tad dramatic, but on the whole, I really enjoyed this novel. Keep Your Friends Close is told in alternating perspectives, and has very short chapters – this all works to build the tension throughout the novel. If you’re anything like me, you’re wary of psychological thrillers these days, you know that fear of ‘too much of the same’ – well you don’t have to worry about that here, I found this novel to be thrilling, the plot was particularly interesting and it had just enough emotion to make me care! The background of Karin was particularly interesting, and it, for me, made her a really interesting protagonist. You all know the classic ‘Janel line’ by now: everything done in the dark will come to light!
Saying keep your enemies closer full#
At the same time, you’re fed Karin’s secret in dribs and drabs, so there’s the additional intrigue of wanting to know the full details of this dark secret. We’ve all heard that phrase: ‘keep your friends close and your enemies closer’ – but just how close should you keep your enemies, how close is too close? For much of this novel, that was the intrigue, who should Karin trust? As the reader, you’re trying to analyse all the characters you meet, wondering if they’re genuine, if Karin should trust them.
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