How can you hide your mistakes when you don’t know what they are?
Gemma Brogan needs a break from her life.
A work event looks the ideal chance to get away. And a friendly new client seems like the perfect gentleman when he joins Gemma for an innocent dinner . . .
But the next morning she has no memory of how the night ended and he has vanished into thin air.
Suddenly, Gemma is plunged into a twisted nightmare she can’t control. To protect her future, and her family, she will have to confront shocking secrets from her past – and the truth about the girl she used to be.
Completely gripping and full of page-turning twists, this is the perfect psychological thriller for fans of Erin Kelly’s HE SAID SHE SAID and Laura Marshall’s FRIEND REQUEST.
I’m absolutely delighted to be closing the Blog Tour for Mary Torjussen’s new novel The Girl I Used To Be and I absolutely loved the twists and turns of this addictive and well-plotted new slice of Domestic Noir.
The Girl I Used To Be is a totally page-turning read that kept me gripped and glued to the page last week in rainy Aberfeldy. Gemma is a memorable an sympathetic protagonist and we find ourselves gripped by the nightmarish situation that she ends up inextricably tangled up in. I was happy to be in from the rain, looking out at the gorgeous views from the warmth of our holiday home, totally caught up in this fast-paced and moreish read.
One of the main reasons that I think we feel so strongly about Gemma’s situation is that she seems like the kind of person we actually might know. Despite the nightmarish situation she ends up in, we never feel like this is improbable or unbelievable. Gemma’s credibility helps make this such a pacy read as we really really want to know what happens to her and how her past decisions will ultimately affect her future. The fact that this is based in an estate agent’s will resonate with lots of true crime lovers as they’re bound to think about the Susie Lamplugh and it really does make you think about the most ordinary encounters we might have in quite a different light at times. Gemma’s client turns out to be a lot more sinister than she initially suspects and this is where the story really starts to get grippy. Gemma’s inner voice tells us that things are not quite as they seem and I feel like this is a sound reminder to us that we should probably listen to that little niggle in real life as it might be the difference between life and death in some situations.
I really enjoyed the way that Gemma was far from being a stereotypical female character, wondering about why men are so crappy or pining over her ex. Gemma has a career and is in a very modern marriage where her partner is the ‘Daddy Daycare’ in the marriage, looking after wee Rory whilst Gemma runs her very successful estate agents. The way that even the most normal of couples have secrets lurking beneath the surface of their marriage and might be very different people than their spouses suspect is a returning theme in domestic noir and I feel like it’s very well-handled here – we immerse ourselves in the facts that emerge and see things start to unravel before our very eyes in a wholly convincing way and I just could NOT put it down! So happy that I was somewhere so tranquil so that I could just keep turning those pages…
The Girl I Used To Be is a must read for all fans of domestic noir who like to be pulled into a story and held there until the very last page. I’d like to thank Anne Cater for inviting me onto the blog tour and introducing me to such a pageturner. I hadn’t read anything else by Mary Torjussen I can’t wait to explore her other books. Grab yourself a copy here and immerse yourself in Gemma’s nightmare collision of past and present for yourself!
I think that it looks gorgeous in my #OnTheShelfie and it’s put me in the mood for some True Crime so I’m off to explore the shelves and see what I can come up with.
Writer On The Shelf
Mary Torjussen grew up in Stoke-on-Trent. There was no television in her family home so books have always been her escape – she spent hours reading and writing stories as a child. Mary has an MA in Creative Writing from Liverpool John Moores University, and worked as a teacher in Liverpool before becoming a full-time writer. She has two adult children and lives on the Wirral, where her debut novel, GONE WITHOUT A TRACE, is set
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On The Shelf Books 