Betray Her

Sue

Rating: really liked it
BETRAY HER is a psychological thriller, a tale of lust, secrets and revenge by Caroline England. This is a riveting character-driven novel.

Her Novels include:
The Wife’s Secret (previously Beneath the Skin) (2017)
My Husband's Lies (2018)
Betray Her (2019)
Truth Games (2020)

Jo and Kate were best friends forever, since meeting at the age of eight at boarding school. They would do anything for each other…but their relationship was full of jealousy and manipulation. They come from very different backgrounds; Jo's family are from Barnsley, her father is from working class stock and his successful construction business allows him to provide what he believes is the best education for his children, whereas Kate - or Catherine Bayden-Jones, is from old money.

The two women stay best friends for the next 30 years. Kate is married to the handsome Tom with a 6-year-old daughter, Alice. Jo widowed 2 years ago when her husband, Richard passed away suddenly and unfortunately wasn't able to have children which she so desperately wants.

This psychological thriller is set in both past (boarding school) and present, with a gradual buildup of tension with a realization that not everything is as it seems. To say more would be to risk spoilers.

The complex flawed characters are well drawn and realistic. I found myself racing towards what turned out to be an explosive and exciting ending, a twist that I didn’t see coming! Looking forward to reading more of her novels. Very enjoyable read.

Many thanks to the author and The Book Club Reviewers request group (FB) for my digital copy.

Dash fan

Rating: really liked it
4☆ A Dark and Twisty, Enthralling Psychological Thriller.

Betray Her is a Twisty Psychological thriller about, friendship, betrayal, jealousy, secrets, obsession and revenge.

The story is told between past and present which added depth as you got to understand why things were unravelling the way they were between best friends Jo and Kate. Secrets and jealousy has a way of wriggling to the surface and can be dangerous as they are about to discover.

The characters are complex, flawed and perfect for the storyline.
There are plenty of twists and turns to keep you on your toes, but this is a slower paced read that builds tension layer by layer, so if you do like Pacy thrillers then just a heads up to stick with it.

So if you are looking for a slow, tense, twisty, gripping, psychological thriller that will keep you enthralled to the very end then I highly recommend reading Betray Her!



Thank you to Little Brown Books Publishers for this copy which I reviewed honestly and voluntarily.




You can Find this Review and all my Other Reviews on My Blog :

http://dashfan81.blogspot.com/2020/07...

Linda Strong

Rating: really liked it
Jo and Kate met when they were both 8 years old at a boarding school. Although there were lots of differences, they became good friends ... best friends forever.

Kate came from a wealthy family. She had the looks, the personality that drew people to her ... and Jo would do anything for her.

Now they're almost 40 years old and not much has changed. Kate still has the looks, and she has what Jo wants ... a husband, a child, a family, a nice home. And what she wants most of all is Kate's husband .. after all, she knew him first.

But she would never hurt Kate ... would she?

This is well written with a thorough look at two women' lifelong friendship. Chapters switch from the time they first met to the things that are happening today. Both women had issues and both were not that likeable. Kate, although having everything, spent most of her time drinking. Jo was hateful with her jealousy. There are many twists and turns leading to a surprising conclusion.

Many thanks to the author for the digital copy of this psychological thriller. Read and reviewed voluntarily, opinions expressed here are unbiased and entirely my own.

Namita

Rating: really liked it
Betray her is a story full of secrets and lies. Jo and Kate had been best friends since boarding school but they have a toxic relationship full of jealousy and manipulation. A psychological thriller with complex flawed characters it made for an interesting read.

I would like to thank the TBC Reviewers request group & the author for providing an ARC of this book in exchange for my honest and fair review

Linda Hill

Rating: really liked it
Jo and Kate have been best friends since they were 8.

Oh, yes. I very much enjoyed Betray Her. It’s really effectively plotted with a dramatic opening that lingers right through the rest of the book so that the reader wonders exactly who was involved and what it means for the narrative. Caroline England has created a very effective sense of menace that hooked me in brilliantly and had the effect of making me think about Betray Her when I wasn’t actually reading it. This story gets right under the reader’s skin.

The plot has an interesting time frame so that the way Jo and Kate’s childhood pasts are revealed contributes to the reader’s understanding of who they become in the present, but equally adds to the uneasiness of the story. Betray Her is a tantalising read. I felt I had a complete understanding of what was happening only to be wrong-footed. Caroline England’s style is incredibly fluid and easy to read so that the action she packs into Betray Her is somehow all the more captivating and shocking.

I thought Caroline England’s characterisation was quite brilliant. Although I thought some of Jo’s behaviour was foolish at best, and often completely reckless, I understood absolutely why she behaved as she did. Similarly, Kate’s more affluent upbringing gave me a clear comprehension of her adult personality. That said, I was still given shocking surprises about both of them so that Betray Her felt like a sophisticated and utterly believable portrayal of the human psyche that I found fascinating. I loved the sexual tension surrounding Jo too as an added layer of intrigue.

Sexuality is only one of the cleverly explored themes of Betray Her. Jealousy, loyalty, family, friendship, parenthood and identity create a tapestry of intrigue that really appealed to me. Indeed, I’d like to go back and reread Betray Her immediately because I think there is more to discover now I know the outcomes of the cracking plot!

I feel I haven’t done justice to Betray Her because it’s so difficult not to give plot spoilers and saying too much about character and events will ruin the read for others. What I will say is that I found the book a compelling and entertaining read that I can recommend without hesitation. I only wish I’d read Caroline England’s writing earlier.

Ruthy lavin

Rating: really liked it
2.5 stars.
A little underwhelming.
This book is a slow starter and I was confident that it would pick up pace towards the end.... it didn’t.
Quite disappointing after being reeled in with the synopsis.
I awarded it 2.5 stars because it is well written but it could have been so much more exciting, a bit boring if I’m honest.

Julie Lacey

Rating: really liked it
This is a really good psychological thriller that is a slow burner, but builds up to some great final few chapters.
I enjoyed the flashbacks to Jo and Kate’s time at boarding school and felt this gave a good background to their friendship.
Jo and Kate remained friends after school but there’s
a bit of history between Jo and Kate’s husband, Tom, that just won’t go away.
I have to say I felt more empathy with Jo through most of the book rather than Kate, but both characters have their faults.
This is a gripping psychological thriller and I’d like to thank Little Brown Book Group UK and NetGalley for the opportunity to read this book.

Joanne Robertson

Rating: really liked it
OMG what a book! I devoured it within a couple of hours, unable to put it down as I became completely and utterly addicted to the toxic friendship between these two very different women. Jo and Kate meet at the age of 8 when they become roommates at boarding school. Jo is the product of “new money” and her parents want the best education possible for her. She is the subject of taunts about her background and the fact her parents have money but no class. Kate is there for her on her first day and they become inseparable. Even though they don’t have much in common, their friendship surprisingly lasts through into adulthood. Jo is now a widow while Kate is living in a beautiful farmhouse with her husband and young daughter. But as we look back we start to realise that both women have history with Tom, Kate’s husband, and the echos of the past are sending vibrations into the present…

This is a dark and twisty slow burner that gradually builds to a shocking ending. I became completely immersed in the lives of these two women even though neither were particularly likeable at times. Jo was the more amiable of the pair but Kate seemed to be the one who was more comfortable with her life so I couldn’t put my finger on why I didn’t connect with her like I expected to. And don’t get me started on Tom!!!!

Betray Her is a compulsive page turner about friendship and lies, love, loss and jealousy. I lost myself within its darkly concealed secrets and didn’t surface again until the richly satisfying ending. Bravo! Another great read from Caroline England it definitely my favourite so far!

Nicola Smith

Rating: really liked it
Betray Her is a twisty story of a friendship between two women which had me gripped as I read it.

The two women are Jo and Kate. They met at boarding school at the tender age of 8. Unlike the pleasant japes of children's stories, school life for these girls was not easy to deal with. I was horrified by some of what went on (I'm guessing there's a lot of truth in the writing though) and am extremely glad I never went to boarding school!

The repercussions of this early friendship are felt down the years. The two women stay best friends for the next 30 years and yet……I kept wondering to myself whether all was as it should be or was this really a toxic friendship?

Betray Her is not a fast paced thriller. It's a domestic noir with a gradual build up of tension and a realisation that there is much bubbling away under the surface. There are several strands to be pulled together including dealing with grief, childlessness, alcohol problems, sexual misdemeanours and more.

I couldn't say I took to either of the women. I found Jo quite selfish and Kate manipulative. I liked how the author made them polar opposites in terms of background and I particularly enjoyed the fact that Jo was from Barnsley, and my home city of Sheffield made a couple of appearances, along with the beautiful Peak District.

I found this book to be a well plotted story of jealousy, rivalry, desire and secrets. Whilst I sometimes found myself losing the thread of the story a bit, I was soon back on track and racing towards what turned out to be an explosive and exciting ending. I enjoyed it a lot.

Caroline Mitchell

Rating: really liked it
Eek! I LOVED this book! An unstoppable thriller with more twists and turns than a corkscrew. This book had me gripped from the very first page! ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Five stars from me.

Karen Cole

Rating: really liked it
Friendships formed during the turbulent school years can be the most intense and that is certainly true for Jo and Kate who become best friends when they are thrust from their safe, loving homes and sent to boarding school at just eight years old. Many of us will have grown up reading Enid Blyton's books, dreaming of midnight feasts and tuck boxes but though Jo and Kate experience both, this frankly horrific school owes more to Dickens than to Blyton.
The short but unsettling prologue should warn readers that Betray Her will take a dark turn but this isn't a breathlessly fast-paced psychological thriller. Instead the darkness creeps in, almost insidiously until it has seeped into every aspect of this addictive, tantalising novel. The storyline shifts between the present day which finds Jo trying to come to terms with the loss of not just her husband but the dreams and plans they had made together, and the boarding school years, beginning with her first day when she and Kate meet and immediately strike up a friendship.
They come from very different backgrounds; Jo's family are from Barnsley, her father is from working class stock and his successful construction business allows him to provide what he believes is the best education for his children, whereas Kate - or Catherine Bayden-Jones, to give her her full name - is from old money. Jo is mocked for her accent and upbringing and even derided by the Matron as the 'ragamuffin from Barnsley' causing her to change who she is, adapting her speaking voice to assimilate with those around her. Kate should fit more naturally into their new world, following as she does her two older sisters. However, her weight and passive nature soon make her a target for the cruel bullies while Jo's fears cause her to stand by, rarely intervening. There are some disturbing revelations about their school years, particularly for Kate who was arguably even more altered by their experiences than Jo.
In the present day, the pair are still close - Kate and her husband, Tom have supported Jo since her terrible loss and Jo is the adoring godmother of their daughter, Alice. However, all is perhaps not as it seems and as we begin to see the consequences of what happened during those troubled years, there are hints that Jo isn't recalling everything that occurred back then. As distressing secrets come to light, Betray Her becomes progressively more chilling as the picture of a perfect friendship is gradually revised to expose the sinister truth.
This is domestic noir at its best, Caroline England's complex, flawed characters are by turns irresistible and repellent and the ending is deliciously shocking. Betray Her artfully twists and turns and is a beautifully written, multi-layered tale of jealousy, manipulation and passion. Just brilliant!

Natalie Campbell

Rating: really liked it
What a great thriller that twists and turns right to the surprising climax.
Betray Her tells the tale of Jo and Kate who meet at boarding school at age 8 and remain best friends into adulthood. They both have their individual struggles and differences yet their friendship remains strong. Then the twists come into the story and will have you questioning everything with a surprise ending to boot. A great novel with an engaging storyline that will have you saying “just one more chapter” well into the night.

Fiona MacDonald

Rating: really liked it
Not one, but three massive twists had me stumped whilst reading "Betray Her."
I was completely engrossed in the plot, which surprised me because I didn't much like any of the characters! I loved the childhood past, the teenage past, the adult past and then the normal past flashbacks and the wonderful descriptions of farmland.
Jo and Kate have been best friends since they first met at St Luke's boarding school many years ago. Now grown ups, Kate has become a wonderful wife and mother and Jo is grieving the death of her husband and trying to finish writing her book.
However, on one of her many trips to stay with Kate and her husband Tom, Tom makes a shocking proposal to Jo, and Jo begins to wonder if her friendship with Kate is still as close as it was all those years ago.

Justkeepreading

Rating: really liked it
Sadly this book wasn’t quite what I was hoping for. Sure there are twist and turns a plenty in this book. Which is why I didn’t put it down. But I jut found it incredibly slow. I did hope that it would pick up the pace in the middle or the end. But this sadly didn’t happen. Sorry

Jannelies

Rating: really liked it
A book that left me with mixed feelings. On the one hand, there is much more going on than it seems at the start of the book. We meet with Johanna (Jo) and Katherine (Kate) as little 8 year old girls, starting boarding school. And of course they hate it, and of course they become best friends, and of course... thirty years later it is a whole different story. The story revolves around friendship and betrayal, about family love and hate, about the thin line between being friends for life or being enemies for life.
Basically it is a well-known story about love and betrayal with some surprises thrown in but I had a little trouble keeping concentrated while reading. There is so much not going on... there is so much thinking aloud, and drinking, drinking, drinking. This is the second book in a short time I've read where thirty-something people seem to fill their days with drinking. I have nothing against having a glass or two with friends, but I think it is too easy to have all characters do and say stupid things because they are drunk all the time.
So all in all a nice read but it lacks that 'special feeling' that would have earned it a star more.

Thanks to Netgalley and Little, Brown for this digital review copy.