Phew, what a crazy, intense read this one was! You know those one sitting, edge of your seat type of reads that only come along occasionally? Keep Her Close is that kind of read, it was wild.

The less you know about this one, the better, there are so many insane twists and turns all the way through that I can’t say much more than what the blurb reveals or I would be verging into spoiler territory. It’s incredibly fast paced, exciting and played off all of my worst fears as parent. I will say that there were a couple of instances where I had to suspend a little disbelief, but I honestly didn’t care because I was so entertained. This had the type of ending that shocks and awes, totally explosive and unexpected. I kept thinking this would make for a great action movie too, it had that same great adrenaline rush and nonstop action. Overall just a really fun, entertaining read!

Keep Her Close in three words: Tense, Explosive and Addictive.

Rather too far fetched to make a convincing read. Plenty of twists turns and red herrings but it just failed to hit the mark for me. I won’t give any of the story away because I’m sure lots of readers will enjoy it...but not really for me.

Keep Her Close was the first book I’ve read by this author but it definitely won’t be my last!
Dan and Holly find a little 3 year old girl in a parking lot with a sign saying “Free to a good home” and her mother is lying dead on the ground below after jumping. Dan and Holly adopt the little girl and call her Ally. Now 15 years later Ally is missing on her birthday after getting a letter from her birth father saying he has cancer and wants to meet her.
Wow what a book it kept me on the edge of my seat and with so many plot twists it kept me guessing the whole way through! And what an ending I definitely did not see that coming!!!

Thank you to Bookouture, Erik Therme and NetGalley for the arc of Keep Her Close my review is honest and unbiased in any way.

While on their way to a midnight movie, Dan and Holly, a young married couple find an abandoned 3 year old girl wearing a yellow dress in the parking garage. Three stories below is the body of a woman in a pool of blood believed to be her mother. Dan and Holly adopt the little girl and name her Ally. Fifteen years later, Ally is sent a letter from a man claiming to be her real father and he would like to see her before he dies of cancer. Ally has always had questions about her “real” family and thinks nothing of going to meet some stranger against the wishes of her parents. When Dan and Holly go looking for Ally, they find her missing and will do everything in their power to bring their daughter back home. Has Ally really found her father or has it all been just a ruse?

Keep Her Close by Erik Therme really starts out pretty strong. I found myself really getting into the storyline and wondering if the letter Ally received is from her father or if something else is going on that goes even deeper. The story is full of twists that kept me guessing and engaged with the story. However, I never really connected with any of the characters. I did like Dan and his unwavering love for his daughter and the lengths he would go to find and protect her, but sometimes he did things that made me shake my head over. There are quite a few characters that I felt could have been left out as they really did add anything relevant to the main story. Plus, I didn’t necessarily feel like most of these extra characters were the smartest in the bunch and a lot of their storylines were pretty far fetched even for a fiction book.

Keep Her Close is an easy read and the mystery/thriller aspect kept me guessing, but the story did fall flat for me just a bit. Did I still enjoy it? Yes! It is a quick and easy read and I found myself engrossed even though there were a few issues for me with the characters and the story. What kept me going were the twists in the story which were really well done.

Enjoyed this tense and fast paced thriller. Clever storyline that kept me turning the pages.
Thanks to Netgalley and Bookouture for this ARC.

If you love a good suspense book this book is for you! A well written thrilling read! This book got me hooked from the moment Ally was found alone in a garage. Definitely a great book from start to finish.

This book will keep you on the edge of your seat! It was fantastic. It hooks you from the start and won't let you go.

Well, this is a twisty turny one! It's my first taste of Therme's work, but it certainly won't be my last.

The opening scene is desperately sad. A little girl, barefoot and all alone in a multi storey car park. Standing on a dirty piece of cardboard marked with the words 'Free to a good home.' My heart broke..

We then jump years into the future, or rather the present as the opening was in the past. Does that make sense? Anyway, that wee girl is called Ally, is now eighteen and has just moved away from home to go to college. Although now divorced, Ally's adoptive parents Dan and Holly clearly have a very strong love for their daughter. Dan is particularly protective of her.

When she received a letter which seems to be from her birth father, Ally is naturally curious, and keen to meet him. But things very definitely don't go to plan. Dan and Holly can't find their daughter, but they do meet Cal, who tells them he is Ally's boyfriend, and has been encouraging her to find out more about her birth father. Dan is not impressed!

I have read a few books recently featuring teenagers or young adults, and as the mother of two teenagers - boys in my case - there has frequently been a feeling of 'There but by the grace of God go I.' This book was no exception. It was easy to write Ally off as being naive, and her lack of street smarts are referenced a number of times in the book. But imagine you are only eighteen, and although you love your parents fiercely, you have no real sense of who you are or where you come from. I think many of us would react as Ally did when she received a letter from someone claiming to be her real father. Of course she was desperate to find out more.

Unfortunately, I can't tell you much about what happens as it would contain spoilers, but clearly things don't go as Ally imagined they would. Her search for the truth takes her into a series of difficult situations with a seriously disturbed person. In the meantime, father Dan is following boyfriend Cal, determined that he knows more than he's telling. Dan tends to act without thinking, and automatically thinks the worst about everyone he meets in the search for his daughter. So he is also getting himself into some sticky situations. That frustrated me about him - I really got quite cross with him - but I admired his powerful love for his daughter and their strong father/daughter bond, despite there being no blood ties.

One of the things I loved about this book is that many of characters we meet aren't who we necessarily think they are when we first come across them. These are complex, multi layered folk, and I didn't feel that the 'baddies' were necessarily all bad. There tended to be reasons, however skewed these might be, for their actions. These characters are all so well written, it was easy to feel their anger, grief, loss and joy.

Ally is described perfectly - an intelligent young woman taking her first steps into womanhood, but who also retains her youthful innocence, and tendency to see/look for the best in everyone. I like to think I do that too (but without the youthful innocence, sadly!), but as Ally discovers it can lead to trouble. But I found myself rooting for her all the way through.

In short, I really enjoyed this book. It's well written, certainly tense, and takes us down some blind allies before the really quite messy (action, not writing!) climax . I kept turning the pages because I was desperate to know what happened to Ally. It's a fabulous psychological thriller which intrigues all the way through. But hug your teenagers extra tight tonight, if they'll let you.

Keep Her Close by Erik Therme
Publisher: Bookouture

Thanks to NetGalley and publisher Bookouture for the ebook ARC of Keep Her Close by Erik Therme in exchange for an honest review.

Someone took your daughter. And nobody believes you…

Then:
Three-year-old Ally was found alone in a parking lot.
She was barefoot and only dressed in a yellow sundress. In the middle of winter.
What kind of person would abandon their daughter?

Now:
Fifteen year later and Ally has a new family.
But her real father has sent her a letter.
Ally doesn’t tell anyone she’s going to meet him.

And now Ally is missing.

I give this book a rating of 5 stars and I highly recommend reading it. This book was a fast paced thriller. Just when I thought I had it figured out, there was a twist that I didn’t see coming. The story was well written and many surprising twists and turns This is the first book I have read by Erik Therme and it definitely won’t be my last!

#KeepHerClose #NetGalley

This book started off really well but then fell a bit in the middle. I didnt really connect with the characters.

This is a 3.5 star read for me if I’m honest as although it was a good read, I found myself not enjoying it as much as I’d hoped I would.

The story itself is intriguing albeit a little unbelievable at times.

Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for providing a copy.

While this story seems farfetched, it is interesting and has great characters. I enjoyed the pacing and there were enough twists to keep the reader guessing.

The description of this book was very good but sadly it it didn't live up to it. I found it too far fetched, and didn't finish it. Not for me !

I chose to read this book after receiving a free e-copy. All opinions in this review are my own and completely unbiased.

I’ve read a few of Erik Therme’s books, and my favorite to this point was Resthaven. I can’t decide whether I like Keep Her Close or Resthaven better, but they are both definitely worth reading.

Keep Her Close grabbed my attention from the beginning and kept me interested throughout. After Ally was rescued years ago by Holly and Dan, they were able to adopt her. Even though they divorced a few years later, they’re still both good parents and they try to get along when it comes to Ally. When Ally goes missing, they work separately to find her but try to keep each other in the loop.

Every chapter seemed to have a new surprise, a new twist, a new clue to follow. I never knew what was going to happen next. I’ve always liked Erik Therme’s writing but the more he writes, the more I like it. His character development has improved a lot and I look forward to reading more of his stories.

If there’s one thing this Ginger Book Geek likes, it’s discovering new authors and Erik Therme is certainly a new author to me. I couldn’t wait to start reading and so without further ado, I jumped straight in. I was not to be disappointed as I thoroughly enjoyed ‘Keep Her Close’ but more about that in a bit.
I couldn’t help but feel for Ally right from the very start of the book and I ended up feeling very protective of her. When the story opens a very young Ally is on her own in a car park with a note saying that she is free to a good home. If I could have swooped in to take her to a safe place then I would have. She could have been picked up by one of the many predators out there. It emerges that a close female relative has fallen to her death. nearby. Fortunately a kind hearted couple come across Ally and ensure that she is safe before notifying the authorities. A few years later we meet Ally again, who has been adopted by the kind hearted couple, who found her all those years ago. Ally is now an adult but she still has lots of unanswered questions about her background and it isn’t surprising that when somebody claiming to be her birth father gets in touch and wants to build a relationship with her much to her adoptive parents’ disgust. I could certainly understand why she was so eager to meet this man but at the same time I think that she was jumping in with both feet without making the necessary checks to either verify his claims or to disprove them. She could have been walking into anything. Ally is kind, generous, perhaps a bit too trusting, friendly, supportive, considerate and compassionate. She is certainly someone I wouldn’t mind having as a friend. I have to admit that I was a bit unsure about the motives of the man claiming to be her birth father but at the same time I couldn’t help but hope that she had found her birth father and that she would finally get the answers she needs about her background. I was keeping everything crossed for her that she got the happy ending that she so deserved. Does she? Well you are going to have to read the book for yourselves to find out as I am not going to tell you.
‘Keep Her Close’ is very well written and easy to get into. The author has a writing style that is easy to get to grips with and to enjoy. The Prologue begins in such an upsetting way that will ensure this book stays fresh in my memory for a long time to come. From that moment onwards ‘Keep Her Close’ became an addiction for me. I found the book to be unputdownable and I read it in one go. I was gripped by the storylines and I was so ‘into’ the book that I began to ‘live’ the story and I found myself interacting with the book. I just couldn’t bear to be parted from the book without first knowing if Ally was safe and whether the man claiming to be her birth father was who he said he was. The deeper I got into the story, the quicker the pages seemed to be turning as I raced towards the end. I had mixed feelings about finishing the book. Don’t get me wrong I was pleased to finish because at least I knew how the story ended but I wasn’t pleased to finish because I was enjoying the author’s writing style, the storylines and the characters so much that I just wanted the book to continue.
Reading ‘Keep Her Close’ was much like being on an occasionally scary and very unpredictable rollercoaster ride with more twists and turns that I care to mention. I smugly thought that I had worked out the details of what had happened, to whom and why only to realise that I had the wrong end of the stick altogether and the solution was something else entirely. The plot of this book certainly kept me on my toes and kept me guessing all the way through.
In short I thoroughly enjoyed reading ‘Keep Her Close’ and I would definitely recommend it to other readers. I can’t wait to read what Erik comes up with next. The score on the Ginger Book Geek board is a very well deserved 5* out of 5*.

Keep Her Close was a thriller with a few twists but at times quite unbelievable.
Dan and Holly find a young child with a sign “free to good home” and after jumping through a lot of hoops are able to adopt her. Ally is 18 years old when she receives a letter saying her real father wants to meet her as he has cancer and regrets leaving her. Ally goes off to meet her real father without telling anyone of this idea and she should have done as things turn out not how she expected them to and goes missing. Holly is distraught and tries to find out things through Ally’s friends but Dan was more act now think later which didn’t work at all.
This is a different read it was at times unbelievable and for some reason I never really clicked with any of the characters, the storyline was good along with the twists though.
I would like to thank Netgalley and Bookouture for this ARC I received in exchange for an honest review.

A mystery story where a young girl is found abandoned and is subsequently adopted. This is the story of Ali and her background. I loved it and I think d etyond shoukd give it a go. A great easy read and a 5/5 on goodresds for me.

Thank you to Bookouture for my copy of this book. The premise was good but unfortunately for me, the book didn't live up to it.

I am going to keep this review short and sweet. I chose not to review during the blog tour as like I said I wasn't a massive fan of this book. I'm going to give a quick list of the things I liked and disliked

Liked

It was quick to read

Disliked

I didn't engage with the characters
The story went off on tangents which I didn't think had any relevance
I didn't think the story was very realistic.

Sadly I don't have much more to add on this one.

Perfect psychological thriller! It moved at a fast pace with twists and turns throughout! I couldn’t put it down! Highly recommend!

With thanks to Netgalley and the publishers for the book in exchange for an honest review.
This book was a gripping psychological thriller that kept you wanting to read until the end. It was about a young woman who was found by a couple when they were late for the cinema and found her alone. Her mother was dead, having jumped over the railings. They then adopted her and raised her together, even when they later divorced.
When she is a naive, gullible 18 year old she receives a letter from her purported father, who is dying of cancer and wants to meet. There then follows a series of disasters leaving people dead.
Recommended.