‘I know you’ has got to be one of the most frustrating thrillers I have read in a long time because I constantly wanted to shake Rachel for making so many bad decisions! I do love a thriller when I’m not a huge fan of the MC because that’s usually a sign I’ll be hooked and I was.
Rachel finds a body in the woods but can’t report it because she has her own secrets, but trouble follows her when the victim is identified as her boyfriend’s ex. Then her past really comes back to haunt her because her real identity is revealed making her the prime murder suspect.
I loved the two stories being told alongside one another because the reader gets steady snippets of Rachel’s past and present so the truth comes out slowly and definitely keeps you guessing. McGowan has constructed an addictive and compelling mystery that I enjoyed immensely.

Interesting characters with enough intrigue to keep you guessing as the secrets unravel; some pieces are a bit coincidental, but an enjoyable summer read for fans of the genre.

I'm not sure how I missed this twisty thriller when it first published, but I loved it and read it through in a couple of days. I really liked the main character, Casey/Rachel, and appreciated how she was trying to put her past behind her. With lots of suspects and surprises, I liked how it all wrapped up and will definitely look for more by this author! I think this would make an awesome movie or mini series on Netflix or Hulu.

Thank you for my review galley!

You never expect to stumble upon a dead body, but can you imagine it happening to you twice in your life?

This psychological thriller is amazing - intense, page-turning, fantastic. I loved the characters, I loved the time hop back and forth between past and present. One fairly large plot hole I was even able to disregard because I was enjoying the book so much. The dialogue is great and the characters are really well written. I didn't know who to trust or believe until the very end.

Fans of an unreliable narrator will really love this book! I did dock it one star because of all the anti-American rhetoric. I understand this author is British but at least a dozen times she knocks America or Americans and I can't understand why. I assume with an American publisher the author realizes that this book will be marketed and sold in the US. Not everyone wants to hear how awful Americans/America is.

Special thank you to Netgalley and Thomas & Mercer (Amazon Publishing) for this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Loved the premise of this, wrong time wrong place theme, really different from what I've read recently, admittedly a tad predictable at times but also some great gripping parts and good twists. Would read more by this author!

I really enjoyed the timeline switch in this book. Even though it was predictable I still loved it. Rachel is the main character so its her we mainly hear from. The ending was superb.

Great read, well written. Certainly made me think. Loved the twists and turns. Would definitely recommend this book.

A very good thriller! My attention was grabbed right from the start and was not lost the whole way through. I loved the dual timeline, it's a fantastic tension building tool and was used very well. I can't wait to read more of Claire's work!

This is a thriller and a half! Tense and gripping this will have you heart beating out of your chest! I couldn’t put it down and ended up finishing it in one sitting! Such a great book and id definitely recommend, be warned, it will keep you up at night!

I Know You is full of tension, lies, secrets, love and justice. Casey is a nanny in America who comes home and finds the family she works for are dead...now, she's just stumbled across a dead body...again.

I liked the character progression and the parallels the book draws between the two timelines. I really did feel in the thick of it.

I thought the ending was too neat though - for me it didn't seem 'realistic' enough but I still enjoyed it and would read more by the author.

𝗦𝘆𝗻𝗼𝗽𝘀𝗶𝘀:

Rachel lives a quiet life in the countryside with her perfect man and their lovely dog. Until she stumbles upon a dead body in the woods. It's not the first time this has happened. She knows what she has to do - run. Don't get accused of murder. But the victim is identified as her boyfriend’s estranged wife and Rachel realizes she’s already the prime suspect. Rachel needs to keep her past well hidden. Because before she was Rachel, she was Casey, a young nanny in LA—and when the family she worked for were brutally murdered, she narrowly escaped the death penalty. Now, she’ll do anything to save the life she’s spent years piecing back together.

𝗥𝗲𝘃𝗶𝗲𝘄:

This is the first of McGowan’s books I’ve read and I was pleasantly surprised! With compelling characters, dual narrative and a terrifying accusation, this book was full of suspense. The chapters alternate between Casey’s narrative in the past and Rachel’s in the present day [Rachel being the new identity Casey goes by]. The double narrative works so well for this plot, providing multiple angles with information revealed piece by piece, as we essentially follow two ongoing mysteries— who killed Anna and what happened at the Safran home twenty years ago?

This gave me TURN OF THE KEY vibes and I really enjoyed the nanny aspect of the plot, having been an au pair abroad myself! Thankfully I worked for an incredible family whom I adored and was made to feel like part of their home, however I could definitely imagine Casey’s anxiety at doing the wrong thing under parent’s watchful eyes, as-well as on the other hand, feel her attachment and love for the kids she looked after.

I loved the twists and turns in this and I think Casey/Rachel was an engaging and well thought out character, and although I found Casey’s chapters more exciting, both POV’s were engaging and kept me gripped. The plot was unique and absolutely unfathomable to imagine— being accused of a murder you didn’t commit with so much past history against you and questionable motives? The acute fear and desperation felt so real through McGowan’s skilled writing. Highly recommend picking this up if you enjoy a dual timeline plot with plenty of twists and a lot of family drama thrown in.

Thank you to Thomas & Mercer and Claire McGowan for an advanced digital copy of this book in return for my honest thoughts.

𝗥𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴: ★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

Haven't we learned that we don't walk in the woods alone? Bad things happen! Another creeepy page turner by Claire McGowan! Enjoyed this one!

What would you do if you stumbled upon a body in the woods? What if it wasn’t your first?

Rachel tried to lead an ordinary life but circumstances won’t allow for that. She finds a body in the woods behind her house and feels she has to figure who and why it’s there. She knows she’s going to be the prime suspect.

Follow Rachel and figure out who is trying to sabotage her life. Or is it all in her head and this was a random body dump that just happens to be begging her house on her well worth running path?

This one opens with action right away, which is always a good thing: Rachel, out in the woods with her dog and ruminating about her life and new lover Alex, stumbles across a body on her usual walking route. But rather than simply call the police, she does something that seems counterintuitive; she runs home and attempts to get on with her day as though nothing happened. In fact, even when the body is later discovered by someone else and the police come calling to see whether she saw anything on her walk, Rachel maintains---at first----that she didn't see it. This is the first clue we have that she has something to hide. And I'll admit, it was definitely a secret worth hiding, and one that explains completely why Rachel would not have called the police in the first place.

Rachel, you see, used to be called Casey. When she was a 19-year-old nanny, working for a Hollywood-adjacent couple in L.A., she went to America looking to, as her mother put it, "make her fortune" in the film industry. Except what she got instead were long, hot days working for a dysfunctional couple, taking care of their two kids---an 8-month-old and a bratty, difficult five-year-old child actress. Just when Casey begins to think her biggest problems will be the coldness and cruelty of the woman of the house, and the almost too warm attention of the man of the house, the entire family, except for the baby is killed and she is charged with the crime. After an appeal however, Casey is released, returns to the UK and changes her name. Pretty good reason not to immediately raise your hand and say you found a body.

The best part of this read for me was the parallel timelines---one in the past with Casey, the other in the present with Rachel, dealing with this new horror. For me, that was the single most interesting element of this book. The character development of the couple Casey worked for was stellar, even though Casey herself seemed less interesting. The book faltered somewhat with the mystery that was taking place in the present. The murder mystery was not in fact much of a mystery. If you read this genre, you'll guess who did it within a few chapters and every attempt at misdirection will fall spectacularly flat. What also fell flat was Rachel's very belated realization of the culprit. So much so, that I think the plot of the present-day story could have been dispensed with altogether in favor of a very interesting single narrative thread following Casey from starry-eyed nanny and wannabe actress to murder suspect.

One other thing that bothered me a little about this book was a tiny, perhaps wonky detail. Casey kept saying she was "exonerated" when her conviction was overturned on appeal. That is not the same thing. Far from it. It made me think the author did very shallow research on the American legal system. It would have been forgivable if it had been mentioned only once, and if there was very little detail in general about the legal process that led Casey to being imprisoned. But if you're going to include great detail, as was the case here, I think you should make sure you get it right.

All things considered, an entertaining, light mystery-suspense read. I wouldn't rush to recommend it, necessarily, but it kept me listening and turning the pages.

AUDIOBOOK NOTE: Didn't love this narrator. Her voice took on a whiny, petulant quality at times that made Casey/Rachel exasperating at times. And her male voices were sometimes ... not so great.

My rating: ⭑⭑⭑

Claire McGowan is an author who’s books I devour as quick as possible and this one was know different. I Know You had great twists and I loved the mystery in this one and I will continue to read everything I can by her.

Thanks to Netgalley and Amazon Publishing for an electronic ARC.

Dog walkers have a terrible time of it when it comes to crime fiction, don't they?
On this occasion, middle aged dog sanctuary volunteer Rachel flees from the sight of a dead body in her local woods. It quickly transpires that this isn't the first time she's discovered the scene of a murder. It's rapidly clear that she will be the prime suspect for this murder too.
The story is told from the perspective of Rachel, as the police and her parallel investigations unfold, and her younger self Casey. That aspect is very interesting, contrasting the battle-scarred, but still oddly clueless Rachel with the naive-to-the-point-of-irritating Casey. However the same thing that makes it interesting also leads to a lot of repetition and some disingenuous withholding of information from the reader.
Many readers, I suspect, won't be too surprised by the ending of either story arc.

Scary with great characters and you never know, from one minute to the text, where this exciting story will take you. I cant wait for the next one from this outstanding author!

I liked the book related in two timelapse. Rachel finds a body in the woods and instead of calling the police she runs, but she does not know it is a mistake she will pay for. The motives of his actions in the presents are conditioned by her past when she was a nanny in USA and was called Casie.

Enjoyable, but unfortunately also very predictable. I was able to figure out who the villain of the first murder was as soon as the character was presented because it was very obvious. There was zero tension around the present day mystery .

Most of I Know You was dedicated to the decades old crime, which forever impacted our protagonist’s life. At 19, she worked as a nanny for a very unhappy family. One day she was out for a walk with the baby, and returned to find everyone murdered. She was accused of the crime based on circumstantial evidence and vilified in the press. The book takes you from when she first arrives in LA (although it feels more like Las Vegas than LA) up through her stay in prison, and the appeal of a group similar to the Innocence Project.

While the book was enjoyable, parts of it really dragged on. So much was devoted to the “before” that the present day mystery was woefully neglected. There were never any plausible suspects except one, and it was hard to care too much how it turned out because it always seemed like an afterthought to the back story. This really would have benefited from more editing and revising.

Thank you to the publisher and to NetGalley for providing me with an ARC of Claire McGowan’s I Know You. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

“ People hide deep pockets of secrecy, of darkness and we don’t like to admit it.” Rachel had many secrets she has hidden. When she stumbles across a dead body, she fears her secrets will be revealed. Rachel has a dark past that is dangerously close. Will the past repeat itself, leaving Rachel’s life in shambles, or will she finally have the fresh start she desperately wants? This book hooked me from the first sentence. This character driven thriller made me care for Rachel and had me asking, “What would I do?” Wrongfully accused, finding a dead body, needless to say she had a lot on her plate and I was captivated as her story unfolded.⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Thank you NetGalley and Thomas & Mercer for my copy.