Wow, just wow!! This book got under my skin...I couldn't put it down and read it in a day. The style of writing was so dark and in my opinion this is Victoria Selman's best book so far.

If you enjoy true crime and the darker side of thrillers then this is absolutely the book for you.

Many thanks to Netgalley and the publishers for an early copy.

This book had me hooked from the beginning. I devoured it from start to finish and I couldn't stop thinking about it for days after I turned the last page. This book is perfect for a lover of stories that keep you on the edge of your seat. This is a "just one more chapter" kind of book, until you realise it's two am and you can't possibly sleep before you reach the end!

Thanks to the publishers and Netgalley for the loan of this book.
This is the first book i've read by this author. The story kicks off with a young girl called Sophie, moving from the USA to the UK where they meet the charismatic Matty who quickly becomes an integral part of their lives.
Sophie looks up to Matty and she sees him as the father she never had, although at times he is unreliable and cruel.
When news of a serial killer erupts in the area they reside, Sophie is fearful for her mother, as the killer is targeting women who resemble her. Sophie's mother doesn't seem too concerned, however and is seemingly disinterested in the news. Sophie, however, takes a keen interest with Matty encouraging her to read all about the killer.
As events unfold, and the killer takes the lives of more women, and with Matty's whereabouts unknown at times, Sophie begins to doubt the man she has come to know as her dad and begins to suspect him as the killer.
The police then receive a tip off and Matty is arrested, but protests his innocence throughout. Sophie is torn between her love for Matty and the fact that he may be a killer, but can she convince her mother?
Many years later, with Matty still in prison, Sophie decides to visit him to find out the answer she has been yearning for, for many years.................will she get what she is hoping for? Buy the book and find out.
I enjoyed this book on the whole, but thought there were certain parts that had no place in it. The scene where Matty is naked in front of a teenage Sophie didn't really resonate with the whole description of his character, nor did the murder of the children and I thought it was unnecessary to mention this in the book. I didn't warm to any of the characters either, they all annoyed me in one way or another. This book has a dark nature, but I did enjoy the whole is he/isn't he a serial killer theme, but ultimately guessed as much way before the conclusion.
I would buy another book from this author as it was an enjoyable read, but not one I couldn't put down.

This was a serial killer story from a different point of view, and I enjoyed the alternative outlook and how the plot unfurled. It was a gripping story that started off really well, I was hooked from the start.

However, the book needed some serious editing. Far too much repetition and long winded. At times I was starting to lose interest after such a good beginning. Once the story was in full flow it should have proceeded naturally, not repeating itself. The ending had a nice little twist, and though mainly predictable it did not spoil my enjoyment.

If this story had been more succinct, and there had been less tooing and froing, it would easily have been a 5* for me.

Thank you NetGalley.

A really solid addition to the genre; reliable, if a little predictable in places. Would recommend if you know what you want from this sort of book, as it definitely delivers that.

The story and the ending was a surprise, only the journey was painful with repetition and jumbled timelines. Good editing could have made this a terrific read.
An independent review thanks to NetGalley / Quercus.

Truly, Darkly, Deeply sees Sophie looking back on the life she shared with her mother and her mother’s partner Matty in the years before Matty is arrested and convicted of murder.
Victoria Selman puts you in Sophie’s shoes as she sways back and forth between believing that her perfect father figure could not be the killer the police are looking for and doubting that it could be anyone else. A great read with an ending I didn’t see coming will definitely be looking for more of this author’s books.

My thoughts about Victoria Selman’s Truly Darkly Deeply is mind blowing. Astounding. Astonishing. Superb. Enthralled. I could go on and put in all adjectives from the dictionary and even then I would still feel I need to say more. 1000 words isn’t enough to write a review on Victoria Selman’s breathtaking thriller. This is a book so sprawling, so layered and densely textured, so full of juicy details. Hats off to Victoria Selman how wonderfully she has managed to right such an amazing intense thriller, and its powerful characters it deserves appreciation. Some books leave you shaken, stunned and chilled, Truly Darkly Deeply is one among them. The story of Victoria Selman’s Truly Darkly Deeply begins with when twelve-year-old Sophie and her mother, Amelia-Rose, move to London from Massachusetts where they meet the charismatic Matty Melgren, who quickly becomes an intrinsic part of their lives. But as the relationship between the two adults fractures, a serial killer begins targeting young women with a striking resemblance to Amelia-Rose. When Matty is eventually sent down for multiple murder, questions remain as to his guilt — questions which ultimately destroy both women. Nearly twenty years later, Sophie receives a letter from Battlemouth Prison informing her Matty is dying and wants to meet. It looks like Sophie might finally get the answers she craves. But will the truth set her free — or bury her deeper. Victoria Selman’s book is utterly compelling, I flew through this book. So well written, well-observed characters and I loved it. Lots of twists to keep me guessing, this book had all the elements I look for in a thriller. I would like to say thank you to author Victoria Selman, and Publishers, Quercus Books and netgally for kindly giving me a chance to read and review this spectacular thriller I’ve enjoyed reading.⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥💥💥💥💥💥

It is hard to describe the premise of Truly, Darkly, Deeply as it wouldn't give it justice. Let's just say it is a clever and captivating tale from a 12 year old girl's perspective on her mother's boyfriend Matty who may or may not be a serial killer. The whole way through you'll be doubting yourself and the closing chapters are not what you will expect. A must read.

Truly, Darkly, Deeply isn't the first novel by Victoria Selman, and I doubt it will be the last. This crime thriller takes us on a dark and twisted journey through the eyes of a child, piecing together the puzzle of a childhood that leaves an endless cycle of questions long into adulthood.

Sophie is eight years old when she moves with her mother, Amelia-Rose, from the US to the UK for a fresh start, and not long afterwards Matty enters their lives and changes everything forever. But what we first are lead to believe slowly begins to be thrown into question until the very end where even that isn't quite what it seemed to be, either. The questions that were the most important, the little bits and pieces of information learnt that should stand out are pushed out of mind while we're left to consider others, things that never lead to answers, misdirection on the part of Matty, or so it seems, until we later come to learn the truth.

Written in first-person, present tense, this narrative style is far from unique, but simple and easy to read, and at times long-winded and repetitive, which is one of the reasons I dislike first-person in general. However, considering how the story starts on a letter inviting Sophie to visit Matty in prison and the whole plot builds around that, going backwards and forwards until we finally see her make that visit right at the very end of the novel once we've heard much of their story through the memories of a child, the likelihood of it having the same effect in any other style is slim. There were times throughout where I lost focus due to the rambled narrative, the build-up to the inevitable prison visit seeming to take far too long to reach, and, unfortunately, by the time the twist ending arrived, I had already long-since figured out how it would end. But, overall, the writing wasn't awful, the story wasn't terrible, and it was easy to get gripped by it once I got into the swing of the rambling; it could just as easily have been impossible for me to get into at all from the start, though, but I'm glad I gave it a chance.

Speaking of the ending, it's a shame that to me it seemed predictable in a lot of ways, but it wasn't all disappointing. By the time the end came around, I was relieved for it, as it does go on far longer than the story itself seems to require, much of what's being said has already been said, etc. I took in all of the details we were given, and unlike the direction we were supposed to be lead in, I kept hold of the details that were thrown away, the things the characters never seemed to dwell on, like the passing comment about how the serial killer known as the Shadow could have been a woman, a joke put out there by conspiracy theorists to be sniffed at, a comment that came a few chapters after I first started to wonder if perhaps Amelia-Rose might be the killer rather than Matty who is put into question, or how the neighbour, Des, started to be made too obvious to be a suspect, casting him in a bad light because he dared not to be like everyone else, the fact Sophie let slip where Matty had gone to in Ireland and Des then disappeared, leaving us to think he had followed him only for the body of a child to turn up - if I'm forced to believe something too strongly, then I automatically assume I'm being manipulated - Des wasn't particularly a nice or sympathetic character, he hit his dog and that's enough for me to dislike him, but he did get the short end of the stick. The box Amelia-Rose kept with animal bones in from her childhood, which would be strange regardless of the circumstances - if they had once belonged to a pet, why keep them rather than bury them? It's an odd and highly questionable thing to do, and a detail that I couldn't let go of. I also fail to believe the masks worn with religion on them, people who preach the loudest often have the most to hide, and perhaps we were supposed to think like that, or maybe I'm merely cynical of all things religion, but either way - it automatically made me suspect that she was guilty in one form or another. Come the end, I, like Sophie, came to doubt whether or not Matty was guilty, as I'm sure that was the point, is he or isn't he, but I had no doubt who shopped him in to the police, Sophie's endless guilt with vagueness surrounding it and no answer as to why a child should feel guilt became more and more obvious, too.

But as predictable as the ending started to become, something I think a little less rambling in circles might have prevented from showing through quite so much, there were some things I hadn't been sure of. The fact Amelia-Rose and Matty were playing a game together, killing together at different ends of the scale - one planning, one acting - and all the little details between, the looks and how easily they could have been wrongly perceived, even from the two sides we were lead to wonder between, the games Matty played with Sophie and how she seemed angered by them, not as a mother who was wary of the familiarity between her daughter and boyfriend, but as jealousy, something she liked to think of as theirs, not wanting to share that darkness between them with her daughter as well. The dynamic between them was intriguing to discover as the end unfolded, the final pieces slotting together where they had been pushed into the wrong places beforehand, but the rest I had already figured out for the most part, and I had hoped there might be a few more surprises after the journey it took us to get there.

Overall, it wasn't an awful ending, all of the lingering questions I had were either answered or alluded to, up to and including whether or not Matty was Sophie's biological father - I had wondered why so much secrecy surrounded Sophie's supposed father, why he left, why it was so easily dismissed, shrugged off, and with the repeated mention of how their eyes were the same shape and shade of green told me from the start he was her daughter, the endless protests that he wasn't her father merely a father-figure told me the opposite must be true (protesting too much is always for a reason), but I had imagined various reasons - Matty attacked Amelia-Rose in the US and followed after them when he realised Sophie existed, perhaps, or an affair with a similar outcome, so the fact there was even more to their relationship beforehand that Sophie hadn't been aware of and therefore neither were we until the very end was a surprise, and it's a shame there wasn't more there to go on, some new bit of information to fill us in on further before ending it, a snippet of evidence that was later published in Sophie's account of what happened in an epilogue or something, but with Amelia-Rose long-dead and Matty dying, there wasn't much space for it otherwise.

The only real disappointment with this novel is the way US/UK language is used at times. Sophie is young when she moves to the UK, but she uses more US phrases than Amelia-Rose who is older and more likely, realistically speaking, to hold onto US phrases. Considering how long both of them have been in the UK, even, it seemed unnecessary to have many US phrases left over except to reminds us that she wasn't originally from the UK. It niggled me that it wasn't her mother who used more of them, holding onto her roots, yet she said fish and chips where Sophie said cod and fries back-to-back, etc. It took away from the flow of the story at times with how forced the Americanisms were put in there and through the wrong character all things considered.

It was a decently written story with an intricate plot that starts at the end and ends at the beginning, with a little too much repetition in between, but overall an enjoyable read with enough elements to keep you guessing until the end, and the ending itself is satisfactory, which these days a lot of novels don't manage to pull off well. I'm not sure what the author's previous novels are about, but I'm almost certain I'll at least check them out, possibly even try them, because there's a lot of potential here for intrigue and a little something different from most things I've picked up in recent times. I recommend this to anyone looking for a crime thriller about a serial killer that's a little different to most, less of a two-dimensional detective story and more of a three-dimensional character-driven story with everything wrapped up and nothing really left unanswered. It's all there with a twist.

A gripping read! I loved this book, this contained all the hall marks of a fabulous thriller.. the story moves between past and resent and through Sophie we learn of her and her mothers turbulent relationship with Matty. What a complicated character this man is, from early on you wonder what makes up this mans personality and what is hidden deep below..

Excellent, very hard to put down I devoured this book in a few sittings. Its about a mother & daughter who relocate from US to the UK and the Mother has a relationship with a man who seems like the sweetest most thoughtful guy but then, things start to happen, like women going missing and women being murdered and Matty - who is apparently harmless and sweet - is a suspect in the murders. As the two women struggle to come to terms with the fact he may be involved the story flits between back then and now. It is so good, I really enjoyed it. Good for anyone who likes thrillers or true crime reads.

I enjoyed reading most of this book but found chapters that were a little far fetched and repetitive. Would this plot line truly happen in real life, I’m not sure.? I wonder if we, ourselves, would have picked up the signals that we were closely associating with a multiple murderer, do we really know everything about another person? . Sometimes the quiet ones turn out to be the most menacing, I’m just not sure. This was very well written but left me in two minds about the realism.

this started out with promise was very face paced and i was desperate to keep reading. but then it just slowed down and became incredibly repetitive. The plot itself was a bit underwhelming, and although was an interesting read in places it wasn't particularly thrilling.

Sophie moves with her Mother to London from the US, developing a close relationship with her Mother's boyfriend Matty as the only Father she has ever known. Sophie becomes very concerned when a serial killer starts targeting women who look like her Mother and eventually Matty is convicted for murder. 20 years later Matty asks Sophie to visit him in prison which will give her the chance to finally get to the truth of what happened.

This was an excellent thriller, the first standalone novel I have read by this author. It is written in the first person which brings you closer to Sophie and leads to a deeper development of the character. The book is very cleverly written, moving between Sophie's childhood and present day which enables the story to gradually unfold as the relationship between Sophie, her mother and Matty is explored. It is a very tense and compelling book and I really enjoyed reading it.

Thanks to the the publisher for the opportunity to read this book on exchange for an honest review.

Victoria Selman is an author I'll read anything by, so of course I was excited to pick up an advance copy of Truly Darkly Deeply! My mind was blown! Ms Selman's latest novel is absolutely not to be missed.!!! highly recommended. Thank you to the publisher and to Victoria Selman for the advanced copy.

Thoroughly absorbing and an engrossing read. Sophie’s story becomes deeper and darker over time. Very well written and entertaining. Off to read all the other Victoria Selman’s books now I’ve found her. Highly recommend.

Wow what a mind blowing read Victoria Selmans imagination.
Matty and Sophie bonds is amazing and they have a fantastic bond. When Matty is arrest for murder she's shocked but is he truly guilty. At bit slow at parts but enjoyedable.

Sophie and her mother Amelia-Rose move to London from America and soon meet the handsome and wonderful Matty Melgren, who treats Sophie like his own. Soon after the relationship starts, women that look very similar to Sophie's mother are being murdered all over North London; a serial killer is committing the crimes.

Told through both Sophie in the present and when Sophie was a child and the serial killer active, we learn how the murders affected the family, their relationships and suspicions of each other. In the present day, Matty is in prison having been found guilty of committing the crimes and sends a letter to Sophie asking for her to visit. Still unsure whether the wrong man has been found guilty all these years later, will Sophie finally get the truth she has been searching for?

Truly, Darkly, Deeply started off brilliantly for me. Some of the main aspects of a thriller novel that keeps me turning the pages is excellent writing, a fast pace and short snappy chapters which this book certainly had. In fact, I sped through the first 30% of the book desperate to know what had happened and how relationships had turned so sour.

Unfortunately though after I read through the first 30%, things really slowed down for me. The writing remained excellent but nothing really happened. The fast pace just stopped and what I was reading felt incredibly repetitive with Sophie asking herself the same questions multiple times and each chapter ending with a present day one liner from Sophie that gradually irritated me more and more. Things like "If only I knew what was coming" or "How wrong was I" sort of thing. Fair enough do this on a couple of chapters but it just happened too much for me.

Whilst I did enjoy that we visit Sophie in both the present day and when she is reflecting on her childhood, I sometimes found myself confused and unclear as to when it changed to either time period. Sometimes it would happen very quickly and to me not very obviously so I'd find myself reading back a couple of paragraphs to confirm what time period we were now in.

The ending, the ending! Without giving any spoilers, the ending was SO underwhelming! I was expecting some big twists and turns and I just didn't get any? I was also left with so many unanswered questions and throughout the book there is a sense that Sophie is blaming herself for something, but when it was revealed what this was, I thought really, is that it?

As already mentioned, I really liked Victoria Selman's writing style and the creepy, tense and cold atmosphere she created throughout the entire book was 10/10. Yet the plot itself was a bit underwhelming for me unfortunately. It was certainly interesting to read from the family perspective of someone found guilty of committing these crimes, but ultimately I was not fully invested in the story.

Wow what a mind blowing read Victoria Selmans imagination beggar’s belief a totally new twist on a serial killer.Don’t feel that I want to give any of the plot away,can only say read it for your self and enjoy,