What a creepy little tale this is. It certainly is a gripping read with a few twists I did not see coming. Told from multiple perspectives this book will keep you hooked until the end.

Without doubt we are in the hands of a skilful crime writer - the psychology of the killers is perfectly and eerily worked out - the innocent women fall into place except for the ambivalence of one of the killers who shields her - I won't say who or how - but it's one bad apple who damages the rest in this story. Some of the details are blurred, and the focus wanders about but it is all for good reason, and we are grabbed along confidently - just utter devotion to entertainment values, no messing about. Yes, there is a police woman who has some sensitivity and who gets onto the scene at just the right times but we are ahead of her as readers and that is always a good feeling!

Man ist gleich in der Geschichte drin. Kate Priddy ist nach dem Wohnungstausch mit ihrem entfernten Cousin Corbin Dell unterwegs zu dessen Wohnung in Boston. Sie hat sich für ein halbes Jahr auf den Weg von London nach Boston gemacht. Im Taxi auf der Fahrt zu Corbins Wohnung erlebt sie während eines Staus in einem klaustrophobischen Tunnel eine heftige Panikattacke und Flashbacks zu dem schrecklichen Erlebten mit ihrem Ex-Freund George, das sich vor 5 Jahren ereignet hat. Auch wenn sie überall mögliche Katastrophen und Unglücke sieht, will sie von April bis Oktober bleiben und Kurse in Kunst und Malerei besuchen.

Sie ist noch nicht ganz angekommen da findet die Polizei im benachbarten Apartment eine Leiche. Sie ist neugierig und kann es nicht lassen selber nachzuforschen, währenddessen geschehen ihr kleine Seltsamkeiten für die sie selber keine Erklärung hat. Man folgt ihr gespannt, überrascht, ungläubig und mit bösen Vorahnung bei ihrem Tun.

Dann geht die Geschichte weiter aus der Sicht von ihrem Nachbarn Alan Cherney. Er berichtet, wie er zunächst unfreiwillig zum Voyeur wird und was er so alles im Apartment des Mordopfers Audrey Marshall beobachtet hat. Eine zeit lang ging auch Cousin Corbin dort ein und aus.

Dann spricht Audreys Freund Jack Kate auf der Straße an, er hat einiges über Audrey und Corbin zu berichten. Danach erfahren wir mehr über George, wie Kate ihn kennengelernt hat und was dann vor fünf Jahren schreckliches geschehen ist. Die Geschichte wird wechselnd aus Kates und Alans Perspektive erzählt. Nach einem Drittel kommen auch geheimnisvolle Kapitel aus Corbins Sicht dazu, beginnend nach seiner Ankunft in London.

Dann entfaltet sich ein ungeahnter, unglaublicher und brutaler Rückblick, man ist geschockt von den vergangenen Ereignissen. Er lernt den Mitstudenten Henry kennen und Gerät mit der Zeit nicht ganz unschuldig in eine grausame, gruselige Falle. So dringen wir bis zu dem Mord an Audrey vor. Gespannt folgt man der Geschichte weiter. Sie ist voller geheimnisvoller Personen und seltsamer kleiner Ereignisse. Man fasst so manchen Verdacht, aber die Zusammenhänge bleiben verwirrend. Ständig sorgt man sich, dass weiter schlimmes geschehen könnte und fürchtet um Kate. Man fühlt sich mit ihr verbunden. Was soll sie von all dem halten? Wem kann sie noch vertrauen?

Das Buch ist fesselnd geschrieben. Es ist ein eindringlicher Psychothriller mit unerwarteten Wendungen. Etwas brutal und gruselig, aber trotzdem fogt man gespannt dem Fortgang. Die Geschichte spitzt sich zu und alle Hauptpersonen treffen aufeinander. Dann beginnt Teil 2 des Buches. Man erlebt die Ereignisse zum Teil erneut, nun allerdings aus der Sicht des Täters und erkennt seine grausame und verrückte Motivation. Dadurch werden jedoch einige Szenen zum dritten mal erzählt, nur aus anderer Perspektive, das ist etwas ermüdend und nimmt einen Teil der Spannung. Zum Schluss werden alle Fälle restlos aufgeklärt. In gewissem Rahmen gibt es für einige Beteiligte sogar ein gutes Ende.

Ein sehr guter Thriller von Peter Swanson mit neuen Elementen und Ideen. „Her Every Fear“ wirft einen Blick in die Abgründe des Zwischenmenschlichen.

4,5 von 5 Punkten

This will publish on 16 Feb: http://editingeverything.com/blog/2017/02/16/every-fear-book-review/

She travels to another country – only to have “Her every fear” realized…

A house swap. Kate Priddy swaps flats with a second cousin she has never actually met, Corbin Dell. He will live in her home, a smallish flat in Belsize Park, London and she will reside in his opulent apartment in Beacon Hill, Boston.

Kate is a very anxious person who is prey to panic attacks. She cannot fully believe that she has ventured to the other side of the Atlantic on this adventure. She takes anti-anxiety pills since being immobilized by fear and grief after a traumatic event in her past.

Her first day in Boston she meets an intriguing neighbor who lives across the courtyard. Alan Cherney is easy to talk to – exuding a sense that she feels she has known him a long time. Also, she finds him attractive in a quirky way.

Shockingly, a woman has been found murdered in an apartment next to hers. She finds a key in Corbin’s apartment with the dead woman’s initials on the key tag. Inexplicably, she crosses the crime scene tape and actually enters the apartment! Is this far-fetched? Just because it is something I would never entertain the thought of doing, does that make Kate’s actions unbelievable? Why would someone who is anxious in the first place, embark on an action that is sure to be adrenalin inducing? You be the judge.

When she is in the murdered woman’s apartment, she realizes that Alan Cherney is looking back at her. His apartment is directly across the courtyard from Audrey’s. Can he see her? or is the lighting precluding him from seeing anyone?

Kate is (privately) an accomplished portrait artist. She sketches the faces she encounters in her day-to-day life. Since arriving in Boston, she has drawn some astutely accurate charcoal portraits of the people she has met. Naturally she finds it extremely unsettling to find that her sketches are not as she remembers them. Have them been subtly changed? The eyes don’t seem quite right…

The reader is told that Alan has been looking at Audrey Marshall for many months. His excellent view of her apartment from his, has led to his being a voyeur in her life. Now… she has been murdered.

The police question Kate. Due to the fact that she has never even met either her distant cousin Corbin, or the murder victim, Audrey, she cannot imagine that she can be helpful to their inquiries.

The reader becomes acquainted with Alan Cheney. Turns out he has a history of voyeurism. That being said, I liked him and found him to be a sympathetic character. (Maybe because he would look at the title of the book Audrey was reading and read the same book along with her… LOL)

Next, the reader gets to know Corbin. We see what he is thinking and experiencing in London. This is not his first visit there. We find out what happened the last time he was ‘across the pond’.

Some relationships are difficult to end.

Corbin has a shocking history that eventually comes to light. Desperate for friendship, he befriended the wrong person… Can he change? Is it even possible? Or, will his previous actions forever color his future?

Who killed Audrey Marshall?

“Her every fear” is a great character-driven thriller with a satisfying ending. The settings were as well developed as the characters and the plot had an almost Hitchcockian feel. I would love to take a meander through the Beacon Hill apartments with the wandering cat, Sanders.

I liked this novel better than the author’s last novel, “The kind worth killing“. That is saying something, because I really enjoyed that one as well. The only flaw for me was Kate’s behavior at times – however I was willing to suspend belief and accept the author’s explanation for her actions. Highly recommended to all who love suspenseful reads centered around psychopathic killers.

This is my first read from Peter Swanson. I've been wanting to read "The Kind Worth Killing" for a long time, so when this book popped up on NetGalley it sounded like something I needed to read right away!

Kate Priddy lives in London and has decided to switch apartments with her distant cousin Corbin, who is from Boston. The switch will be for six months and after the stress Kate has been under, it sounds like a good idea. She can take classes while staying in Boston as well as do some sightseeing.

However, she's already wondering if this was such a great idea.

As the books opens, Kate is already in Boston, stuck in a tunnel under Boston Harbor. Traffic is blocked and she's starting to panic. Panic attacks are not new to Kate and she tries to deep breath to calm herself...

"Face it. Accept it. Float with it. Let time Pass" is her mantra

The darkness and the smell reminds Kate of being trapped in another dark place after she was kidnapped and held in a closet. Just when she feels like she's headed for a full flown anxiety attack traffic starts moving.

She gets to her cousin's apartment and falls in love with the space and the view. A few moments later she hears noises in the hall. A woman is worried about her friend who has not been answering her messages. Kate has a strange feeling that something awful has happened to the woman.

Now she REALLY feels like she should never have some to America.

The story was told from multiple points of view. Occasionally the different viewpoints of the same event became a bit repetitive. However, I still enjoyed this book. It held my attention and didn't take more than a few sittings to read.

I look forward to reading more from Peter Swanson.

Thank you NetGalley, Faber & Faber, and Peter Swanson for providing an advanced readers copy of this book for me to read in exchange for my honest review.

So the first thing you need to know is that I love (and I mean LOVE) Peter Swanson’s The Kind Worth Killing. (No, really, I LOVE it!) It’s a book I will always recommend. It’s the book that I felt deserved all the hype Paula Hawkins’s The Girl on the Train received (The Kind Worth Killing is, in my opinion, far superior). So if, in the future, you read another of my reviews (no matter what the book) and I say, ‘this book had a lot to live up to’ then please think about Her Every Fear. Because of all the books in all the world, this is the one I have been anticipating the most. This is the one that has the most to live up to.

I guess the question is, how did it fare in comparison? It’s a great book and I thoroughly enjoyed it…but it didn’t move me in the way A Kind Worth Killing did. I think it’s time for me to shut up about A Kind Worth Killing (if you haven’t read it, BUY IT – here’s a helpful link) and tell you more about my Her Every Fear experience.

I immediately liked the main protagonist, Kate Priddy. Kate, because of a traumatic experience several years earlier, sees the worst situation in absolutely everything. She’s nervy, anxious and scared. As you can imagine, this stops her from living her life to the full. So when her American cousin suggests a 6 month house exchange so he can work in London, Kate is shocked to find herself accepting and on a plane to Boston. Her new apartment is a the opposite of what she has left behind and she finds herself starting to relax. That is until her new next door neighbour’s mutilated body is discovered, mere hours after Kate’s arrival. Meanwhile, Kate’s handsome cousin Corbin is settling into London life. London holds some dear memories for him; particularly his love affair with mysterious Claire. Before long the police are asking Kate questions she can’t answer and Corbin’s flat is searched, time and time again. Were Corbin and the neighbour involved? He’s denied it, but is he telling the truth? And what other secrets is Corbin hiding…?

There were moments whilst reading Her Every Fear that I had goosebumps. Peter Swanson’s ability to build the suspense in his novels is breathtaking. And for me, he is a master of his craft. As I mentioned before, I loved Kate and saw a little of myself in her. She’s such a likeable character. I know Her Every Fear is a psychological thriller, but I really didn’t want anything bad to happen to her (normally I’m desperate for the bad stuff to happen)! It was however interesting to see how this somewhat neurotic character coped with the reality of being in these awful situations.

Peter Swanson shows at times an incredible ability to make you dislike one of his characters, only to reveal their shocking backstory and make you completely change your mind. There were several occurrences where I had made my mind up about a character, only for Swanson to throw a twist into the story and for me to question my original verdict.

The story was fascinating and I enjoyed seeing how the loose ends tied together. I particularly loved the closing chapters which were intense and shocking. I want to say so much more at this point but by doing so I’d be giving spoilers away, which I try to avoid doing at all costs. So I will say that I finished reading this book last week but I can still picture that final scene as if it were real.

Would I recommend this book? Of course I would! Peter Swanson is officially one of my favourite authors and although this isn’t quite up to A Kind Worth Killing it is still a superbly written, dark tale which I enjoyed and would recommend without hesitation.

Four and a half stars out of five.

I chose to read and review an eARC of Her Every Fear. Many thanks to Faber & Faber and NetGalley for providing me with a copy. The above review is my own unbiased opinion.

I started off loving the first part of the book as the theme seemed fascinating but that pleasure didn't last. The main character Kate was understandably suffering from a kind of post traumatic stress disorder after an awful ordeal with an ex but whilst I give no plot away I have to say that this disorder was not only totally unnecessary to the plot of the book it actually made her actions completely unbelievable. The characters were ill thought through with plot determining how they would react rather than any consistency. Far too many unlikely coincidences and unrealistic discoveries also made me quite dislike this book.

Compulsive read!! Kept me enraptured from the first page!! Excellent!!!

I think Peter swanson is a brilliant author since reading kind worth killing.
Peter has succeeded in Her Every Fear it was very disturbing but just wanted to carry on reading it. The characters were very well developed and I suspected nearly everyone at one point. A brilliant read that shows how that is a Peter is a perfect storyteller and was born to be a writer

Another original take on the crime murder mystery.
A very claustrophobic novel seen initially from Kate Priddy's perspective. A young woman recovering from months of therapy after a fatal incident with her ex-boyfriend. His over attention leads to her being locked in a cupboard before he kills himself. She is finally rescued by the police severely traumatised.
Kate this troubled young thing that sees danger everywhere but equally curious and often too open with strangers takes the bold decision to swap her flat in London for her cousin on a six-month placement for his apartment in Boston. She feels this could be the push she now needs to break free from her vivid dreams and lucid memories. Making a fresh start by attending a local college to make more of her natural skills as an artist.
The book begins how you might expect for this fragile creature jet lagged and uncertain of her new surroundings and neighbourhood. However, when it transpires that a female tenant is missing and later found murdered her resolve to be independent evaporates. Then perhaps because the horror happened to another young woman and not her, and although her anxieties are raised her curiosity and investigative reasoning takes over. Never comfortable but unable to not pry, especially in terms of her cousin who left around the time his neighbour was killed, she finds out more information than perhaps is safe to know.
I loved the fact that the point of view of the narrator moved between the characters we originally meet through Kate's eyes. The reader is given a different standpoint to facts they are aware of but not yet clear how they fit in with the overall direction of the story.
This gives fresh facts to the reader that we know Kate doesn't always have; this heightens our concern for her and we share her paranoia since we are aware of the person these characters are and not just the personas they seek to present.
Amid all these players is a killer and our fear is they will ultimately focus on Kate.
Great novel, beautifully crafted and told in a fresh and accomplished way underlining the strength of this author whose previous books were received with great praise. This is well placed to add to his reputation, the only question worth asking, being: 'Have you read a Peter Swanson novel?'

Peter Swanson's "Her Every Fear" presents the very scenario that would haunt us all. Imagine your worst nightmare and then consider how you would react if you had to relive it.
A highly readable and imaginative novel which addresses serial murder with an innovative approach and refreshingly different angle. I thought the book could have benefitted from more twists and turns but I'm sure that is me being unfair.

A fantastic creepy thriller & a pure page turner. This is now my second book iv read by the author peter Swanson and won't be my last very much now on my "Must Read" pile of authors.
I adored the kind worth killing which was my book pick of 2015 so very excited to read "her every fear" and it did not disappoint. I have recommended this book to fellow readers and book clubs for fans of the genre psychological thriller and very much fits into the gone girl and girl on the train cataogory, and lives up to that hype unlike so many other titles pushed into that theme.
Admittly a slow start but quickly picks up pace and by 10% in i was reluncant to put it to one side.
I loved the switch to Corbins story from Kate's & at about 65% in I thought I'd got it and then 💥 bam I was wrong. A book that keeps the reader engaged and guessing right to the end is a winner for me. I'm now a fan of Peter Swansons I will go back and read the girl with the clock heart and all other future publications will be on my hit list . I will highly recommend his latest overing on social media and websites. 5/5 superb!

This is my second book by Peter Swanson, but I preferred the kind worth killing as it had better pace. I found this to be too slow in pace and I'd worked out what was going on pretty quickly. I prefer having shocks and twists when I'm reading a thriller but this didn't happen. I did enjoy the writing itself so will still try another book by this author.

Thanks goes to net galley and the publisher for providing me with a copy in exchange for an honest review.

A thriller to read with the lights on and doors locked. Crime with a twist

Very intense and obsessional

Kate Priddy has agreed to a six-month flat exchange with an American cousin she has never met, and as she makes her way to Boston, we are made aware that Kate suffers from some kind of highly obsessional problem. This would appear to relate to a time during her university education when her boyfriend, also, had problems.

Kate is constantly bombarded with fears and phobias, always thinking the worst of situations. However, when it turns out that one of her new neighbours is missing, Kate just knows that something is terribly wrong. When things go from bad to worse, we fear for Kate.

Although this book was a good read, I did find myself wondering about the balance of characters within. It seemed to me that, whether a ‘goodie’ or a ‘baddie’, each cast member was wholly wrapped up in themselves and obsessive to the point of unbelievability. Also the ease with which people were able to move not just within other people’s properties, but also from country to country just did not ring true.

I finished this book with a sense of relief that I would be able to re-enter the world of normality, away from the feelings of dread and imminent doom. And then I remembered that I wasn’t at all sure what ‘normal’ was!

Sméagol

Breakaway Reviewers received a copy of this book to review.

This book is clearly going to be a bestseller. Everything about the hype is true, it's great! Recommended to all

Kate had been through some hard times. As a result of the actions of a previous boyfriend she has been left with severe anxiety and suffers panic attacks. She is starting to turn a corner and when a distant cousin in Boston is coming to London for six months he suggests they swap apartments it seems like the ideal opportunity to get her life back. Although the apartment is the height of luxury, discovering her next door neighbour has just been murdered does not set her at ease.

I really liked the way Peter Swanson created the sense of fear that Kate felt. He captured her growing sense of menace -which was pretty high to start with. I thought that this was a well paced novel, although the end seemed a bit rushed which is why I did not feel able to give it five stars but it is really worth a read. Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for giving me the chance to do so.

While this fell ever so slightly short of the absolute plotting perfection that was The Kind Worth Killing, it's still a better thriller than 99% out there. Peter Swanson writes books worth buying. Very highly recommended!

A prescription-strength, wild, glorious, and at times frightening ride! Loved it!