The Alibi Girl by C.J Skuse ★★★★★

Published : 6th February 2020

Publisher : HQ

Format : Kindle, Paperback, Audio

Genre : Thriller

Synopsis..

JOANNE HAYNES HAS A SECRET.

THAT IS NOT HER REAL NAME.

And there’s more. Her flat isn’t hers. Her cats aren't hers. Even her hair isn’t really hers.

Nor is she any of the other women she pretends to be. Not the bestselling romance novelist who gets her morning snack from the doughnut van on the seafront. Nor the pregnant woman in the dental surgery. Nor the chemo patient in the supermarket for whom the cashier feels ever so sorry. They're all just alibis.

In fact, the only thing that’s real about Joanne is that nobody can know who she really is.

But someone has got too close. It looks like her alibis have begun to run out….

My Review...

Thank you HQ for this amazing read. Dark, gripping and utterly unpredictable, this was one of those books that you can't out down, even for a minute. I was literally walking to the toilet reading as many pages as I could before I had to stop...

I adored the main character, she has so many aliases that she uses for different people, that even from the beginning even though she is being deceitful, you can't help but like her.

'Joanne' seems very young in her mind at first and you also know from the offset that she and her five week old baby are hiding from someone, and this is not the first time she has moved because of it.

Set over two time periods, now and eighteen years ago you gradually begin to work out what happened to make her this way and also the strong bonds she had as a child, ultimately her life in the present and how she behaves is solely due to her past experiences.

There is a mystery weaved throughout and the whole story mainly revolves around lies and the truth and it is an endless task of working out which is which, one that I loved participating in though. She strongly believes she is protecting her self and her baby with these daily lies, a different alias for everyone she meets in such a small town, you cant help but wonder when it will cross over and catch her out.

So convincing are they that she actually finds herself daydreaming about the rest of the day in that life as if it was real. But in reality she goes home, locks all the doors and windows and dreads the people she is hiding from turning up. As the story goes on you get to really know the real 'Joanne' and all the tragic twists and turns make it so absorbing that you find yourself pondering over the book long after it has been put down.

I could not get enough of this one and did not expect the fabulous twist at the end.

C. J. Skuse is definitely added to my top author list for future reads.

Purchase Links

Waterstones

Amazon

BookDepository

Meet the author

C.J. Skuse was born in 1980 in Weston-super-Mare, England.

She has first-class degrees in Creative Writing and Writing for Children and, aside from writing novels, works as a freelance children’s fiction consultant and lectures in Writing for Children at Bath Spa University.

C.J. loves: Masterchef, Gummy Bears and murder sites. She hates: carnivals, hard-boiled eggs and coughing.

The movies Titanic, My Best Friend’s Wedding and Ruby Sparks were all probably based on her ideas; she just didn't get to write them down in time.

Before she dies, she would like to go to Japan, try clay-pigeon shooting and have Ryan Gosling present her with the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay.