Due to health issues cannot write a proper review now even if I enjoyed this book. as it's well plotted, twisty and entertaining. I liked the good storytelling
Not the right book if you are under stress but a good thriller
A more extensive review will follow
Recommended.Many thanks to the publisher for this ARC, all opinions are mine

This book was ok, but I feel it could have been alot better. The pacing was very slow and I found that I got bored.

When an after show party goes wrong !!
Jack rings his mom at 2 in the morning, asking for her help? Why?? They had been drinking in an abandoned house, but nothing could prepare his mom for what she saw??? What happened? Has jack done something?
Only Jack cant remember .......
This is a great read had me gripped, how far would a parent go for their child?? Great physcological thriller.

3.5 stars rounded down for reasons I will explain later.
We start with single mum Emma who receives a call in the wee hours from her son Jack begging for help. She rushes to him and finds him in a derelict building standing over the body of his ex-girlfriend Zoe. Jack says he woke up to find her dead, and with the drink and drugs he took at the party they were both at, has no recollection of what happened... Emma's maternal instincts kick in and she helps Jack put the body in the car, drives to a remote place, and waits while he hides it where, hopefully, no one will find it...
Emma tries to return to her teaching life the next day but as word spreads about Zoe's disappearance, especially as she is the daughter of the man she is having an affair with, it all starts to get a bit tricky for her and her work starts to suffer. And then she gets a message from someone who saw what she did...
And then it all degenerates into a bit of a bonkers mess which gets more and more incredible as it goes on. I say incredible, it's also predictable and I did guess what happened quite early on. That said, the author did rather shock me with how she brought the story to its conclusion and I have to admit to being impressed with that!
Another thing that excited me initially was the inclusion of one of my favourite animals which you don't hear about that often, if ever, the Mouflon (which you can see a pretty impressive herd of at the New Forest Wildlife Park), although my excitement swiftly turned sour when I read them described as a goat and native only to Cyprus - they are actually a species of sheep and only one subspecies of them is only found there. I know, I know, no one else cares and it's a small thing, but it's important to me!
All in all, an OK read that did keep me occupied and sort of entertained. But given my previous healthy track record with this author will not, in itself, put me off her. My thanks go to the Publisher and Netgalley for the chance to read this book.

#WhatSheDid #NetGalley
Awesome.
What would you do to protect the ones you love?
Single-mother Emma is at her limit, with two children to look after, a demanding job and an ex-husband who doesn't pull his weight. Mostly she manages, but when her teenage son, Jack, calls her in the middle of the night saying that he needs help, her life is thrown into chaos. She finds him in a state of panic. His ex-girlfriend, Zoe, is lying on the floor, dead. They'd been at a party, drinking too much and taking drugs, and Jack has no memory of how they got there. Emma's instinct is to protect her son at all costs, so she helps him hide Zoe's body. But can she handle keeping their secret, or will it break her?
Thanks to NetGalley and Quercus Books for giving me an advance copy.

This was such a suspensful read overall, straight away I was desperate to see how far Emma would go to protect her family and I didn't want to put it down until I found this out..

Emma is woken in the night by a call from her son Jack, he has woke in an abandoned house next to the the dead body of his ex girlfriend Zoe. Hasty decisions follow that lead Emma to become an accomplice after the fact, but with the belief her son is innocent as he has zero memory of the previous nights events. Emma starts a one woman amateur sleuth campaign as she tries to piece together what happened to Zoe, who is to blame and why Jack was implicated. As a teacher at the school she has access to most of the children and is keeping her ear to the ground.

Destination, murder mystery thriller, a whodunnit that I raced through. This is the perfect summer read, set in sunny Cyprus, divorced Emma is mum to two teenagers Jack and Molly and determined to find out the truth of Zoe’s murder, no matter what gets in her way. Craving the reveal of the murderer had me flying through the book and the ending was superb. Every so often a hidden gem of a book like this crosses my path , special thanks to NetGalley, publisher and author for my advanced copy, I will be sure to be reading more of Karen Cole’s work

My thanks to Quercus Books and NetGalley for giving me the opportunity to read ‘What She Did’ written by Karen Cole in exchange for my honest and unbiased review.

Emma Christou is living in Cyprus with her children Jack and Molly and teaches English at a local school. Jack rings her phone in the middle of the night as he desperately needs help and begs her to come to an old house as soon as she can. She finds him with his ex-girlfriend Zoe Ross lying on the stone floor in a pool of blood. Emma wants to phone the police but Jack persuades her to help him dispose of Zoe’s body in an old unused mine in the mountains. They’ll be safe as long as no one finds out what they’ve done.

‘What She Did’ is a gripping story of love and hate and set in picturesque Cyprus. I like the character of Emma although some of the decisions she makes are not very sensible and she’s definitely more forgiving than I’d be given the circumstances, but they show the lengths a mother will go to while attempting to protect her child. The story has drama and suspense and the tension keeps increasing with each twist and turn until the final massive twist that’s totally unexpected and has left me open-mouthed with shock. This novel is compulsive reading and is one I can recommend.

Single mother Emma is at her limit, with two children to look after, a demanding job, and an ex-husband who doesn't pull his weight. Mostly she manages, but when her teenage son, Jack, calls her in the middle of the night saying that he needs help, her life is thrown into chaos. She finds him in a state of panic. His ex-girlfriend, Zoe, is lying in the floor dead. They'd been to a party, drinking too much and taking drugs, and Jack has no memory of how they got there. Emma's instinct is to protect her son at all costs, so she helps him hide Emma's body. But can she handle keeping their secret, or will it break her?

Set in Cyprus. Emma is divorced from her Cypriot husband. She's an English teacher at the children's secondary school. While sleeping one night, her phone wakes her, It's her son, Jack, telling her he needs her help. He's just woken up in a derelict house, hos ex-girlfriend is dead. Emma and Jack hide the body and try to continue as normal. Emma tries to find out what happened the night Zoe died. The pace is steady. This book shows how far a mother would go to protect her own. The past thirty percent is the best part of the book. If it had been like this all the way through, this would have been a five-star read.

Published 18th July 2024

I would like to thank #NetGalley #QuercusBooks and the author #KarenCole for my ARC of #WhatSheDid in exchange for an honest review.

Deftly Done..
How far would you go to protect someone that you love more than life itself? This is the question for Emma in this twisting psychological suspense with a dark edge. As Emma’s natural instincts kick in, she finds herself in an increasingly dizzying situation. Immersive and compelling with a deftly drawn cast, a propulsive plot and a pacy narrative.

Thanks to Netgalley and Quercus for providing this ARC for an honest review.

Emma is a divorced teacher, single mother of 2 teenagers, and having an affair with a married fellow teacher. When her son calls her in the middle of the night telling her that he needs help because he has woken up from being black out drunk and his friend Zoe is dead, and he isn't sure if he killed her, Emma immediately goes to help. They move the body to where no one will find it, but that is just the start of the trouble for Emma. Now she has to act like she has no idea what could have happened to the missing girl, and she wants to figure out who really killed her so that she can exonerate her son if he becomes a suspect.

3.5 stars.

I like this author and I love that this book was set in Cyprus, which sounds like such an interesting place. I really didn't like Emma, as she was going on in her inner monologues about how she was a good person while she was actively sleeping with a married man and withholding from him what actually happened to his daughter. I thought it was a little slow as well. There were chunks of the book where I felt nothing new was being turned up, but around 65% I started getting more interested in what had really happened and when I found out, it was definitely unexpected but I don't know if it was a super satisfying ending. Not a bad read, but not this author's best.

I enjoyed the character development of Emma. Overall some parts were slow and at times predictable. I still enjoyed it though.

This book was okay just far too slow. I really struggled to like the main character and could not relate to her at all which put me off. I did like the ending as I didn't see the twist coming

Psychological thrillers in sunnier climes are amongst my favourite things - this novel ticked those boxes and many more besides. I defy anyone to predict THAT ending...!

Set in beautiful Cyprus, Emma is an English woman, who, having married a Cypriot (now divorced), has 2 children nearing the end of their secondary education. Emma is an English teacher in her children's secondary school. Sleeping soundly in her bed one night, Emma is woken to the sound of her phone - on answering she is delivered the news from her son that he has awoken in a derelict house, lying next to him is the corpse of his brutally murdered ex-girlfriend! Believing him to have been set up for the murder they quickly hide the body and clean the crime scene. What follows is a wonderful tale in amateur sleuthing as Emma seeks to find the identity of the murderer. The reveal is spectacular! This is an utter treat, gripping to the end - a novel I would 100% recommend.

My thanks to NetGalley, author and publisher for the opportunity to review this novel in exchange for an advance copy.

Emma is a single mother living in Cyprus with her two kids, one being her teenage son who's been acting out a lot since her husband left her for another woman.

Things get even more complicated when the daughter of the man she has been having an affair with starts dating the aforementioned son, before breaking his heart.

But it gets a lot worse when her son Jack calls her late at night, after he was meant to be at a party, to say that he's in a deserted old house, the girl is dead, and he cannot remember what actually happened in the lead up to her death. Emma has a terrible choice to make...

An entertaining read exploring the limits of a mother's love - or the absence of those limits. It gets 3.5 stars.

This was such a well written book I love the writing style and how the story pulled you in from the start and didn’t let go until the very end. It was full of drama throughout. What a final twist I really didn’t see that coming. Highly recommend this excellent thriller to everyone. Thanks to netgalley and the publisher for my advanced copy of this book.

A son needs his mother. How far would you go to protect him? Bribery &blackmail. Lies, doubt and pushed to extremes. Another absolutely gripping thriller from Karen Cole!

Perfect for those who enjoy:
- Short sharp chapters
- Fast paced destination thrillers
- Stories that make you question what you’d do in the same situation!
- Jaw dropping endings

With thanks to Quercus books and Netgalley for an ARC copy in return for an honest review.

Single-mother Emma has two children to look after, a demanding job, an ex-husband who left for somebody younger. She also has a lover, a work colleague.
Her life is suddenly more chaotic when her son Jack rings and asks for her help. His ex-girlfriend, Zoe, is dead. She helps him hide the body and then has to dela with all the lies that this entails.
Will it send her into madness or will they all survive?

What She Did by K. Cole, published by Quercus Books is a full length, stand alone, thrilling read.
Emma is a single mom with two kids, a demanding job, a needy ex-husband, She has her hands full. When her teenage son calls her in the deep of night needing her help, she can't fathom what happened. Driven by wanting to protect her pup and finding the truth at the same time, she's torn. And soon she's in danger too.
It took me a minute to get into the story, but ptettty soon I was hooked. A great read, 4,5 stars.

This is a great book. Very well put together. The storyline is told very well and I was hooked until the very end.
Highly recommended.