Read this book in one day - gripping from the start, lots of twists.
Emily is a well developed main character.

Emily is a lovely lost soul, one day whilst out shopping she lets a mother and child cross the road before her with devastating consequences as the woman is hit by an oncoming car. Emily learns the lady was Rose the wife of a famous author, the more Emily sees on social media of Roses perfect life with her husband Cian and baby Jack the more bad she feels as though she should of been the one to be hit by the car. When Roses job is advertised Emily applies and gets the job, meets Cian and Jack and slowly slots herself into Roses old life. A brilliant thriller of a book that will have you turning the pages late into the night.

Plot: Emily lets a stranger with a child in a pushchair step out in front of her out of courtesy, but never imagines that is a decision that will change her life as a car sweeps up the mother and kills her. Stuck in a dead end job, Emily digs deeper into Rose’s life to find out she has it all: a perfect husband, amazing job and perfect life. At first, she tells herself she’s just applying for her job because she needs a better one, but slowly she starts to make more and more conscious decisions to fill the empty place Rose left behind. But, of course, there’s more to Rose’s life than everyone assumed, and when a man is found dead, the plot thickens. Can Emily find out what’s going on and get out before it’s too late?

My thoughts: This book was a fun ride but wasn’t my favourite. It’s part psychological thriller – where Emily slowly draws into Rose’s life and convinces the reader that this is the right thing to do – and part mystery – trying to figure out who did what and why, and who can and can’t be trusted. This means you’re in for a good few twists along the way which are thrilling and sometimes a bit crazy. The building of facades in Emily’s life echoes those that happened in Rose’s, but also warn the reader of the dangers of putting a perfect life out there on social media – something very relevant right now and done well. Like I said, a good enjoyable read, one that would make a good summer thriller, but not an absolute fave.

This was an amazing, gripping, tense book which totally engrossed me from start to finish.

I kept changing my mind over what I thought the outcome was, and I was still wrong.

Captivating

Her Name Was Rose is a thriller I struggled to get into at the start as it was apart from the first chapter quite a slow burner. Emily is the main character in this psychological thriller and it starts at a great pace with her witnessing a hit and run. Emily then gets obsessed with the deceased, the life she lead and her family and job. To be honest I found Emily to be an unlikeable character and I think for the first half that is why I didn’t truest connect with the story and the characters. The more into the book I got the more I wanted to know who had committed the hit and run and why.
The ending didn’t end as I thought it was going to do so that was a plus point and I liked how everything was tied up neatly at the end.
I would like to thank Netgalley and Avon Books UK for this ARC I received in exchange for an honest review.

I could not put this book down. Gripped from page one. It will leave you breathless. A well written psychological thriller.

"Her name was Rose" is a great read about how far we will go to believe in people we want to believe in. Many parts of the story will keep you guessing. While I had a hard time getting into it at first and felt the story moved a little slow, it was still a great read.

Oh my gosh, this book has been hooked! It is very addictive and you will not want to put it down.
I found myself dying to know what was going on, my heart was pounding, I was on the edge of my seat. I really felt for Emily, she has been through so much, I mean you can never unsee what she did. I was desperate for this book to have a happy ending.

If you pick up this book you will definitely not be disappointed. It is excellent! I am looking forward to reading more by Claire Allan, her style of writing is just fantastic.

Oh Emily! The grass isn’t always greener! This is an intense read about Emily who witnesses Alice die and she kind of wants to live Alice’s perfect life with her perfect family. She does just that and unfortunately finds out that the perfect life and the perfect family don’t exist. Secrets and surprises greet you at each chapter! Read on!

Thank you to Net Galley and the Publisher for a free ARC novel in exchange for an honest review.

This was an absolutely amazing read by Claire Allan. It was almost impossible to put down and now that I've finished it, I'm sorry that it has ended. This was a psychological thriller that kept you guessing with each page that you turned. The main character was Emily and she witnessed a horrific accident. She questions herself, she feels guilty that it was not her that died. The victim's name was Rose. Emily sets about learning everything that she can about Rose. She stalks her Facebook profile, she steps into her life. She learns that her former job now has a vacancy and she applies to fill it. She becomes more and more involved in the life of Rose. It's easy to see why she does this - she feels sad & lonely and to her Rose looked like she had the perfect life.

Around every corner of this book there is a new twist. Each one leaves your jaw dropping to the floor because it was so unexpected. Even right up until the last sentence of the book.

EXCERPT: It should have been me. I should have been the one who was tossed in the air by the impact of a car that didn't stop. 'Like a ragdoll,' the papers said.

I had seen it. She wasn't like a ragdoll. A ragdoll is soft, malleable even. This impact was not soft. There were no cushions. No graceful flight through the air. No softness.

ABOUT THIS BOOK: Her name was Rose. You watched her die. And her death has created a vacancy.

When Emily lets a stranger step out in front of her, she never imagines that split second will change her life. But after Emily watches a car plough into the young mother – killing her instantly – she finds herself unable to move on.

And then she makes a decision she can never take back.

Because Rose had everything Emily had ever dreamed of. A beautiful, loving family, a great job and a stunning home. And now Rose’s husband misses his wife, and their son needs a mother. Why couldn’t Emily fill that space?

But as Emily is about to discover, no one’s life is perfect … and not everything is as it seems.

MY THOUGHTS: Her Name Was Rose by Claire Allan starts slowly, slowly sucking the reader into a vortex where it is impossible to know who to trust, who to believe. Just having finished this read, I feel shaken, still not sure which way is up, like I have just fallen from a giant tumble drier. But wow! What a ride. I enjoyed every page more than the last and wish I could have read it in one sitting. There are a few implausibilities but honestly?, I was so invested in the story that they really didn't matter. That rarely happens to me; usually these things niggle away at me, detracting from my enjoyment, but not this time.

4.5 stars and I will be checking out this author's other books.

Thank you to Avon Books via Netgalley for providing a digital ARC of Her Name Was Rose by Claire Allan for review. All opinions expressed in this review are entirely my own personal opinions.

Please refer to my Goodreads.com profile page or the 'about' page on sandysbookaday.wordpress.com for an explanation of my rating system.

This review and others are also published on my blog sandysbookaday.wordpress.com https://sandysbookaday.wordpress.com/...

♥I got an ARC from the publisher through NetGalley and this is my most honest uninfluenced review♥

"Of course, being at the funeral made me feel worse. I suppose I should have expected that. But I hadn’t expected to feel jealous of her. Jealous that her death had had such an impact."

Rating: 7 of 7; 7 of 5; 9 of 10

"Did it make me a bad person that as I watched this woman deal with her grief in front of me, my primary thought was that here was a woman who could use a friend and I could be that friend to her?"

General view: I was so dying to put my hands on this book! And honestly, not even a little disappointed. We have an accident, Rose is dead and Emily has a terrible suspicion. She starts stalking the victim's life and family. Losing her job, she decides to apply to Rose's old one. And she gets it. And then Rose's husband and son are in Emily's life. Emily acts pretty much like crazy, all the lies and stalking, and soon enough she will realise there's no such things as a perfect life. Something about grass and the colour green? Mixing the present with Emily's pov and past with Rose's pov, Claire Allan give us an amazing story where no one is what they seem, with crazy plot twists - and a lot of craziness.

Positives: not slow-pacing reading; a good amount of twists; holy trinidad: great idea, great writing and great exection.

Ending: good one with no loose strings. Unbelievable plot twist. Yeah, I can't say more than that, anything would be a great spoiler. I can say we get a happy ending, tho.

Side note: definitly going to check the other books from Claire Allan! Loved it

Tags: domestic-violence, mystery-thriller, psychological-thrillers, thrillers-mystery-and-crime, unstoppable, can't-put-it-down


Quote overdose
"Even if it meant throwing the odd sickie at work to be there and be ‘his muse’. Even if it meant hiding my own reading habits from him like they were a dirty secret. Even if it meant being the butt of his jokes at times. ‘Oh, Rose wouldn’t get that. She prefers something a bit lighter – don’t you Rose? I feel grateful if she agrees to read my books.’"

"Even when his anger shifted gear – when he became lazy about making sure the bruises could be hidden so easily, or when his tongue loosened a little too much in company. Not that we kept much company. We enjoyed ‘another cosy night in together’ too much – well, according to my Facebook posts we did."

"I had believed in the power of love. I had believed I could make him love me as much as I loved him. That I could change him. No, not change – fix. Heal. Heal him with love."

"In his worse days, he had railed a bit, told me I didn’t understand, could never understand. That how could someone who’s ambitions only ever extended to helping clean teeth ever understand the pressure he was under? How hard it was?"

"He had calmly told me that working at the level he was working at brought so many stresses he had never really thought about before. That I was lucky to have ‘a wee nothing job’ that I could ‘leave behind at the end of the day’."

"Stockholm syndrome? Isn’t that what they call it? When a kidnapped person falls for their captor? Not that he had kidnapped me – I had gone of my own accord, freely and in the belief that he loved me and I loved him. And that no one else could ever love me the way he did. No one else would ever love me. That’s what he told me anyway."

"Someone who loved him more – loved him enough to be everything for him whenever he wanted it. However he wanted it. Someone to keep his home perfect. Make him tea and bring him biscuits when he was writing. Keep the baby quiet. Look beautiful. Let him climb on top of me and thrust himself into me when he needed to release tension."

"I’d become an accessory – and for a long time I believed that was all I was good for."

"It wasn’t that he needed to be more gentle – softer – it was that I needed to be harder. Tougher."

"So I stood up to him. I stood up to him when he demanded I leave my job. I took what he threw at me (some choice words, a cup, his fist) but I stood my ground. I’d lost enough of myself. I didn’t want to lose any more. I told him if he didn’t let up, he would lose me. I warned him."

"That and then, finally, unexpectedly, feeling what it was like to be really loved. Realising I wasn’t too soft. I didn’t need to change. I was good enough – as I was. I didn’t have to act. I didn’t have to fit anyone’s mould other than my own. I was loveable."

"So I have a secret smile, but if he asked me what the status was about, which he would – he always did – I’d lie. I’d become quite adept at lying. Anybody looking in would think I was ridiculously happy. I wasn’t. But I would be."

"I had been blind to a man’s control once again. Then again, maybe I just wanted my happy ending and I would take less than perfect to get that. Even if less than perfect bordered on abusive."

"Controlling me. Stripping away everything that made me me, until I don’t think I knew who I was any more. Not really. And everyone was jealous. That was the biggest joke of all."

"Cian says I’m ungrateful. He has ‘given me everything’. I suppose he has. The house. The car. The baby. The stupidly expensive wedding ring on my finger, which I hate wearing. He upgraded my plain, gold band – which my granny had worn and had given to me before our wedding – when he won The Simpson Award."

"I didn’t want the new band. Platinum. Diamonds. Blingy. All the girls were mad about it. Said he must really love me. I hated it. A loud ‘I own you’ shouting from my finger. All status. All ‘look at how great I am’. Look at what I have. Look what I treat my wife to."

"I still hadn’t figured out that Heathcliff wasn’t so much a romantic hero as a psychopath who controlled and destroyed everything he loved."

"But really, I was just another thing to him. Something to own. A character in one of his books – and he tried to edit me, rewrite me and decide my plot twists."
"I didn’t even realise it at first. I’m that stupid. What was romantic and protective became possessive and claustrophobic. I realised it had been a few weeks since I’d seen my parents or my sisters. Then my friends stopped calling round so much. Definitely not when he was home – and he’s a writer, he’s always at home."

"I could see me blending into the background, like the wallpaper in his office. Expensive. Pretty. But just decoration. Without real purpose. Except to make him happy. Quietly."

"He told me I was ungrateful. Unsupportive. He told me I was a bad mother – before I even held Jack in my arms. How could a mother have a baby and plan to give the baby to someone else to mind while she went out to work?"

"I wasn’t like him. I’m ordinary. Boring. I couldn’t create anything if my life depended on it. Except his babies, apparently. But I don’t"

"He had done to her what Ben did to me – made her feel as if she brought his tempers and controlling behaviour on herself."

Great book. Very suspenseful. Her Name was Rose is about a woman Emily who witness a hit and run. She is sure it was meant for her but as she finds out more about Rose and her life suspension turns to maybe it was meant for Rose. Emily wants to be as happy as Tose and starts to take over her life. Great read that will keep you at the edge of your seat.

This book immediately hooked me in morbid fascination. Emily, the main character witnesses a hit and run accident when a woman called Rose is fatally injured. The stark reality of the fingers of fate and the shockwaves that reverberate and change the lives of so many is well presented. The portrayal of social media speculation and hate made me cringe. It's hard for everyone to move on as the repercussions kick in. Was it an accident or deliberate? Emily is recovering from an abusive relationship with an ex-partner and thinks she was the target. She seems to have a penchant for lame ducks, but she's a lonely character. She can't believe anyone can accept her as she is, so she emulates others to try and fit in. The accident was the window of opportunity for her to step into the shoes of dead Rose and what chaos that caused. There's a lot to think about in this book. You never really know people. Who can you trust? What struck me most was that I believe loneliness will become if not already the most significant problem in our society. Emily is searching for love, acceptance and happiness and finds it elusive. This book portrays this so well, and how deluded Emily becomes to the extent of needing anxiety pills to cope. It's poignant. The characters are created with great care but I felt a little uncomfortable that the dead woman Rose had chapters written in the first person. That was chilling despite giving the background story. It's difficult to figure out what and who is behind the incidents that occurred, but there are surprises along the way and a lot is not revealed until the end. My sort of plot. Thank you to NetGalley and Avon Books UK.

Thank you NetGalley for this ARC.

This was not a psychological thriller. There was nothing thrilling about it. It is a fast read but it is totally predictable. Not a fan of this book... it was ok but could have been so much more.

I'm sorry

Omg that first page!! I don't think I have ever read a first page that hooked me as fast as this one did. Wow - it blew me away so much, I had very high hopes for the rest of the book, that's for sure.

Emily finds herself being a witness to an event, completely unaware that it was going to end up dominating her life for quite a while. Should it have been her? What was the identity of the person whose life ended up being cut short? With no sign of the driver who ended a life much too early, the police have a difficult task ahead of them to find the culprit. But, the more into the victims life they dig, the more skeletons they find jumping out at them from the closet.

Claire Allan made Emily's next steps very clear almost straight away. At first I couldn't work out why we were delving into Emily's mindset and quick decision-making from the get go, but once the storyline progressed, it became clear that it was a very, very clever move on the authors part. Whilst the 'accident' dominates a lot of the story, the author keeps her readers on their toes by introducing different paths for her characters to walk on, with some being not as closely linked to the accident as others.

The psychological element to 'Her Name Was Rose' was very well written, making my head ache (in a good way) as I tried to dissect certain pieces of information to try to work out the truth that was being concealed exceptionally well.

I don't often pick up on things like this, however, I thought the use of shorter sentences was a brilliant addition as it kept me hooked, drip feeding me information as and when the author decided. I found myself becoming shocked a lot more due to how Claire Allan told her story, rather than having to digest long sentences with a lot of information. Very clever.

I thoroughly enjoyed 'Her Name Was Rose'. The pace was on point and the entire storyline was highly charged with intensity and suspense - I swear I have paper cuts on my hands from turning the pages of the book so quickly!

A little bit creepier than I expected.. and I am very glad it was! The beginning instantly pulls you in, although beware.. I was a bit confused at first. There were a lot of characters being thrown your way and it took me a while for everything to line up. But after that everything started to go into place and I was very intrigued. Great read!

I could not put this book down. Twisty, suspenseful and wholly enjoyable. Kept me guessing throughout.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for allowing me to read this book for free in exchange for an honest review. I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It follows the story of Emily, who has problems from a difficult past. Emily witnesses a hit and run and becomes obsessed with the victim’s life, she seeks out information from social media and becomes wrapped up in her seemingly fantastic lifestyle. All is not as it seems however and as Emily befriends the victim’s Husband and takes her now vacant role at a dental practice, things take a chilling turn. An excellent story, well told and kept me gripped. A good book to take on holiday.

Poor Emily is having a very bad time—Girl on the Train bad—in this debut thriller from author Claire Allan, which brings her to her ninth published novel.

Still struggling for coherence in the wake of a devastating relationship, replete with abuse both physical and psychological, an act of casual kindness on Emily’s part leads to the death of a young mother just steps from her, which triggers severe traumatic reverberations in her psyche. Still engaged in the process of putting herself back together, this experience steadily erodes any progress made. Emily descends into a miasma of paranoia and self-loathing, a mess of destructive, deceptive, damaging impulses.

Worse yet, she conjectures that she may indeed have been the intended target of the fatal hit-and-run just outside the doorway of the shopping centre—immediate in her mind is the vague threat or promise which was the departing word of her former partner. Shattered and fractured with her self-identity unstable, a guilt-ridden Emily begins an investigation into the background of a woman she comes to know as Rose and uncovers (as the “glow and sparkle” of her online life would have one believe) a charmed existence with her successful author husband Cian, young child Jack, and perfectly appointed home.

For a broken individual like Emily, who had long ago “dismantled her own life” and not quite found the way back (plugging any sharp or dulled angles with the comforts of drink and prescription pills), Rose looms as a beguiling, seductive figure of envy and wish fulfilment. Without quite deliberating, an irrational Emily finds herself on a course to embroil herself in Rose’s former life—first becoming her replacement at former employer Scott’s Dental and interacting with her colleagues.

Then eventually she meets Cian himself, gently inveigling her way into the core of Rose’s existence, sidling in as his friend and confidante, the relationship quickly warping into a carnally fraught coupling. Curiously, whether or not it is intended, sexuality is viewed through a prism of arrested adolescence—there is quite a lot of knee-weakening and fluttering to the pit of the stomach, which is a sort of indulgent pubescent lust, which may be a reflection of dysfunction in development. It’s clear that Emily’s decision making skills are stunningly impaired with her spectacularly awkward appearances at a set of funerals also speaks to this fact.

With her short, punchy prose and breathless pace—the opening chapter especially benefits from this style in communicating the immediate shock, terror, and chaotic aftermath of the accident—Allen successfully mines the form of the suspense novel, and the clever slow drip of information in regards to character and behaviour creates a continual inventory of twists and turns that keeps the pages turning.

Vulnerabilities and secret fears drive many cast members into surprising and startling actions. Nearly everyone has a personal revelation. The style also nicely complements the disordered mind of the central character. She additionally offers up an astutely serious, sober study of the mentality that undergirds victims of abuse, its consequent compromises to personal worth and value and the terrible ways in which it fixedly grounds down a sense of self. So much of what drives Emily’s discord is her own history and experience of debasement, and her complicity in the perceptions that those closest to her now hold (she keenly feels the loss of support of her family). Her only ally, Maud, has relocated to New York. Her particular heartbreak is in the fact that her sacrifice never changed Ben, her erstwhile boyfriend, into the man she thought him capable of being.

Intervening chapters, headed by chirpy Facebook postings by Rose charting the wondrous stages of her courtship with Cian, are belied with increasingly anxious, dispiriting text from a secret diary ripe with growing alarm and despair at darkening moods of controlling anger, which point to the fact that Emily and Rose may share much in common. Emily’s toxic involvement with Cian addresses recurring patterns of behaviour, and his possible professional exploitation of that behaviour.

Admirably, Allan is unflinching in following her protagonist into some truly dark, gnarled psychosexual territory, at best reminiscent of Rear Window Hitchcock (identity transference, wilful domination, deliberate masochism). Emily is not always likeable or sympathetic, and is dubiously reliable, but she possesses a heedlessness that compels. Momentum drags a bit in the middle section, and the climax feels markedly rushed, but is preceded by an effectively menacing scene in which Emily queasily receives and dispatches an evening visitor that qualifies as the true emotional crux of the novel.

Quite beyond its thriller trappings, this works just as well as a fine character study of a woman on the verge who must find a strength and faith in herself to break free of her own worst instincts, rescuing herself from her past. She, as any great hero on a quest, must first face many a trial on the way to salvation and release.