A terrifying page turner of a book...Zoe is missing and a serial killer has her...there is so much more. This certainly is not your average serial killer book, it is so well written with so many tidbits that help set the creepy and eerie tone of the book. Heart pounding chapters that tie everything together. The ending is like the scene from the movie Carrie, when the hand comes up from the grave. Excited for Rosie Walker's next book.
Thank you Netgalley for an ARC and the publishers.

It felt slow at the start but then the end was rather abrupt. Thomas and Maggie's characters were well-written from a children's perspective.

Kindly received an ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

This book was slow to start but once it got started; it moved rather quickly & I couldn't out it down. Kept me wanting to know more & find out what happens.
Will definitely recommend to others. I will have to look for more books by this author.

This is dark, tense, chilling and thrilling!
I cannot believe how good this book is! It’s very character heavy and all knits up well together to form the most creepy read! Highly addictive

I had a hard time getting into this book. There were too many characters in the beginning and it was a little choppy. Midway through it had my attention and my heart racing. Once I got there, I couldn’t stop reading. I would recommend this creepy, suspenseful thriller.

WOW! Let me catch my breath! This debut novel drags you into the depths of depravity and spits you out with no remorse! A chilling and atmospheric read that will give you goosebumps galore! I loved the multiple POV’s and the sense of place was on point! But that ending - OMFG 😱 More please!

Full review will be posted on my blog on publication day and link provided

I loved this fast paced thriller that with a twist even at the end. Captured my interest right from the beginning, partly gave me ending I wanted but leaving me with that slight feeling of unease.....brilliant.

When out with her friend and boyfriend one night, 17 year old Zoe finds her drink being spiked and her subsequent capture a crazed man. There appears to be a link between missing girls in Lancaster alongside some sort of link with the now closed mental health asylum.
Cousins Thomas and Maggie are after some excitement and decide to start a secret missions club. A trek through the forest leads them to a derelict caravan which seems to house many dark secrets of its own
Wanting to explore further the cousins are attracted to the asylum. However they soon find themselves in the extremely dangerous situation of finding Zoe and trying to plan an escape.

Absolutely recommend this book and look forward to another by this author.

This was my first book by this author, It was pretty enjoyable. I would give this book a 3.5 star rating! It was a pretty Quick and easy read!

My go-to books are edge-of-your-seat thrillers. There are so many books published every day that promise to scare me, keep me up at night, etc. They very rarely live up to their hype, so I was skeptical when the tagline for my latest read promised to "make your skin crawl." My obsession with the thriller genre began by reading R.L. Stine's Fear Street books way back in middle school. Even then I could tell the writing was subpar, but they were quick reads and I loved trying to figure out the bad guy. Later on, I graduated to reading adult thrillers and I can still remember Dean Koontz's "Intensity" in vivid detail all these years later. I enjoyed that story so much and it's been quite awhile since I've found a book that scared me in such an effortless way. And then I read "Secrets of a Serial Killer" by Rosie Walker.

Holy cow! This book is phenomenal! I could not put it down. The writing is superb and the plot is creepy and full of suspense. There is some violence and gore, but none of it feels like it's there for shock and awe. It serves a purpose in creating suspense and fear, but it doesn't get out of control. This could be easily turned into a terrifying horror movie. I know it may be hard to believe, but I don't have a single complaint about this book. Not one!

When I began reading, I was worried that I would have difficulty keeping track of all of the narrators. There is Zoe, a 17 year-old girl dating an older man, much to her parents' chagrin. She thinks she has all the answers and is fiercely independent, as you'd expect of a teenager. Helen is Zoe's mother and she works as an architect, specializing in repurposing historical buildings into modern living spaces. Her current project involves an old insane asylum. She is divorced from Zoe's father and tends to put all her energy into micromanaging her daughter's life. We also have Thomas, a prepubescent boy who lives next door with his journalist mother. He's consumed with finding out what happened to his father who left suddenly without explanation. He spends his time with his cousin, Maggie, who loves to explore and pretend she's a detective. And then we have HIM, the elusive serial killer the police claim doesn't exist. He's determined to make Zoe his next victim and has twisted things in store for her. Despite the numerous narrators, I needn't have worried. The points of view are masterfully woven together into a seamless story line that had my heart pounding from start to finish. The characters feel very real and authentic in their roles.

Great characters aside, the setting of this novel is also spot on. The time is set in the present in Lancaster, UK, but there's a lot of talk about the history of the lunatic asylum Helen is developing. A famed serial killer was kept there for some time in the 1980s and there seems to be quite a few coincidences between his crimes and several girls who have recently gone missing. The cops chalk it up to a bunch of runaways, but Thomas's mother causes problems for the authorities when she claims there's a serial killer on the loose in her articles. The abandoned asylum and its surrounding woods create the perfect ambiance for such a terrifying story. I could actually smell the mildew from the old caravan in the woods. The writing was that descriptive. I was able to visualize every single scene in this book without any problems and it really was a total creep fest. There's no way this story would have been half as engrossing as it was without such a dynamic setting.

After doing some research on the author, it appears this is her debut novel, but I will definitely be reading whatever Rosie Walker comes up with next. If you're a fan of thrillers and are looking for a truly scary reading experience, you've really got to check this one out. You won't be disappointed!

My Rating: ★★★★★
At the time of this post, this title is set to be released on July 17, 2020.

*Thanks to HarperCollins UK, One More Chapter, and Netgalley for providing me with a digital ARC in exchange for an honest review!

In “Secrets of a Serial Killer” by Rosie Walker we are brought into the life of a serial killer that has been using the small town of Lancaster for decades as a hunting ground. When Zoe, a seventeen-year-old student, goes missing everyone in her circle works to try to find her before it’s too late. But will a determined mother, retired policeman father, serial killer obsessed friend, journalist neighbor and two eleven-year-old Harriet the Spy watching cousins be enough?

A definite page turned with all the right feelings of a serial killer thriller. I received an ARC of this book through Net Galley and this is my honest review.

This was so creepy and I loved it!!!! I enjoyed how the different character's perspectives and knowledge wove together, and the impending sense of doom that was created. A well established setting, complicated character dynamics and a truly engaging story made for a wonderful read!

I liked the flow of this book and how all of the perspectives lead into one another. It wasnt all this is what this character is doing and now this is what this character is doing like some books do. I did enjoy this book but i found it to be all one level, i would have liked just a little bit of something more.

Most people in my life know me as something of a night owl (and a morning lark if you promise me a good, long walk to see the sunrise), but believe it or not, I actually had plans to go to bed relatively early the night I began reading Rosie Walker's Secrets of a Serial Killer. As it grew later and later, I decided that even though I hadn't finished it, I could do it in the morning - and yet, somehow, I found myself awake at 3:30am, eager to turn the final page and reach the conclusion of what had shaped up to be a wild ride full of nail-biting twists and turns.

Unlike in other thrillers I've recently enjoyed, the tension here isn't in the rush for the reader and protagonist to learn the identity of the villain alongside each other, it's in the rush for the novel's main characters to realise what's going on and who's behind it while the reader already knows (or thinks they already know) and is waiting for them to catch up. Here, we meet our bad guy close to the beginning and are quickly thrown inside his head - a very disturbing place to be - where we can only silently will our protagonists to stay away from him... or find him in time.

There are multiple points of view here, one belonging to an eleven-year-old boy; one to mum Helen, frantically searching for her seventeen-year-old daughter, Zoe; one to Zoe herself, abducted from a night out; and the last to our villain. We spend a lot of time with Helen especially, feeling her frustration - she knows that her daughter would never run away from home, but the police are adamant that there's no serial killer hunting young girls in Lancaster, and all the while, the hours tick by, diminishing Zoe's chances of survival by the second. In the work of a lesser writer, everybody would sound very similar, but Walker gives each person a unique voice and a unique perspective. Combined with the vivid, eerie setting, this produces the unsettling effect that the events unfolding here could be happening nearby.

I wasn't expecting this one to be quite so clever. Certain things are not what they first appear to be, everything is interwoven seamlessly, and every tidbit of information you're given, even those that seem like nothing, could turn out to be significant. Above all, when I read a thriller, I want to be surprised and kept on my toes, and Walker definitely delivered - I let out a real gasp at the end!

For me, this was a definite 4.5-star read!

A very entertaining addition to the serial killer subgenre. A recommended purchase for collections where thrillers are popular.

This was a not so good book that skirted greatness. That is really the best way to describe this novel. It was a solid base story for the genre, but just seemed to continually not quite make it to real character development, backstory, social commentary, creep factor etc.

The characters could have been interesting, but mostly read as archetypes. The plot could have been exciting, but was instead a bit predictable. The killer could have been unique and complex, but nothing about their backstory or technique was particularly compelling as presented. The ending was so abrupt, and felt so incomplete, I was genuinely convinced I had been sent a truncated copy for review. You are so neatly handed all the information you need (there are no big twists here) so you “get” the ending, it just felt anticlimactic.

Time and time again I would read some prose and feel like the author was finally building some steam, and some good stuff was coming yet...I felt like it never really got there. As a horror/thriller/murder mystery book, it fell short for me. I would however, be interested to see more work from this author. This book was not my preference, but hints at storytelling that could be really creepy and amazing.

I LOVED this thriller. It was a quick read and kept me on the edge of my seat the entire time. The book reminded me of the TV show Criminal Minds because you start out not knowing who the serial killer is, but by the end the pieces are starting to fit together with an image of the killer. I enjoyed the different points of view and tying them all together at the end. This book kept me wanting to read until I finished it!

Thanks to HarperCollins UK, One More Chapter and NetGalley!

This is a character driven novel with an old, crumbling building as a backdrop. Perhaps the old insane asylum is a character in itself...At times, I had difficulty in keeping the plethora of characters straight...kids, adults, kidnapping, ghost hunting...When I read, I like beginning to end...in first person or third...the troubling part of this story was that it skipped to so many characters. In the end, they are brought together, but the journey to that is often troubling. This is a dark story...dark in that the building, the characters, and the story behind it is dark, mysterious, and cruel. Don't grab this one for a rainy afternoon...for an hour of enjoyment...this is a book that one must concentrate on...trying to discern what is going on...while making sure all doors are locked. Not sure I could read it again...

Omg. That's what I was saying through this story, I couldn't believe what I was reading. This is a Serial killer thriller that will mess with your mind. I loved how the book is set out, each chapter a different person but also the newspaper articles and what members of the public were saying about the articles. When Zoe gets kidnapped by this elusive man how will she escape? Rosie writes with so much passion i felt as though I was there and willing Zoe to stay safe. I didn't want this story to end. I would give it 10/10.

Tense chilling a book that drew me in had me on the edge of my seat.So tense so well written a true page turner.Highly recommend.#netgalley#harpercollinsuk

Secrets of a Serial Killer (Rosie Walker) is one of those stories that the reader gets involved with the main characters, really caring what happens to them. Difficult to put down there comes a point where it is impossible to stop reading, you MUST know what happens. I want to thank Net Galley, One More Chapter, and Harper Collins, UK for an early copy to review.