Today I am on the tour for Mark’s new book with my fellow #tribe buddy Eva @ Novel Deelights where she is also sharing her thoughts on this new #TwistedTilbury book!
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The Last One To See Her by Mark TilburyPublished by Self Published on June 4 2020
Format: eARC
Source: Author
Pages: 266
Amazon UK
Also by this author: A Prayer For The Broken, One Must Die
He says he is innocent. So why did he lie?
Mathew Hillock was the last person to see eleven-year-old Jodie Willis alive. When her dead body turns up four days later in his garden shed, the police think he’s guilty of her murder. So do most people in the town. But there’s no DNA evidence to link him to the crime.
Battling the weight of public opinion and mental illness due to a childhood head trauma, he sinks into a deep depression.
Can Mathew do what the police failed to do and find evidence linking the real killer to the crime?
The Last One to See Her is a terrifying story of what happens when you’re accused of a crime and no one believes you are innocent
I have finally had the chance to sit down and read a book by Mark following his invite on this tour and boy did I fly through this book. I can now see why he has the hashtag #TwistedTilbury!!
From the opening pages, you can sense the fear and foreboding of this story, but thankfully, for the more squeamish of people, the violence is off-screen and left all to our vivid imaginations and sometimes it is not a place we want to go.
Matthew our MC, has not had the easiest of lives so far and we watch him struggle with living what is deemed a “normal” life, due to events in the past it has left Matthew with some mental health issues and you see him retreating to his cave in his head where he suffers something called fugues, and this can cause him to blackout. This does not help when the police come a-knocking.
Jim Bentley the other guy in the story, well he is a Class A douche, spends more time digging a hole to get himself out of trouble and really it makes things worse for him and the people around him.
I really did not know what to expect when reading this and I couldn’t for the life of me figure out who this terrifying Dr Dark reading inserts from his diary. It takes a lot to creep me out but his diary entries are damn chilling. The lack of human empathy and emotion is truly scary, the tone of his entries where in his mind he is just having a conversation with someone about something is as trivial as the weather is truly horrifying!
When you have all this going on and a girl goes missing, well you know that things are not going to be all sweetness and light here and it is heartbreaking. So many points of view in this book and each one, well you wonder when someone might catch a break. What I did love about this book, for a change of pace for me, there is no police detecting point of view, bar one small scene. We are told the story by the “suspects” by the victims’ parent, by everyone but the police and it was nice to see how the lives were being impacted rather than the investigation side of things. It made a change to see how everyone has to try and pick up the pieces, live their lives with everything going on around them. This is not something we normally see, so thank you.
This was my first book by Mark and what an introduction, it is safe to say this won’t be my last one! (see below). His writing sucked me in and I became completely absorbed and forgot what was going on in the world as I wanted to know what happened. Boy was that a sucker-punch! This book was so dark and I loved it, no light relief, no safe haven, just pure unadulterated darkness and it has left me wanting more of his books.
Until next time xxx
Thank you so much to Mark for the tour invite and for a copy of this book in return for my honest and unbiased review
Do you have any other recommendations by this author? Tell me below in the comments!
Reading this book contributed to these challenges:
nickimags @ The Secret Library Book Blog says
Fab review xx
Zoé says
Thanks lovely xx
carhicks says
Wonderful review Zoe. I have read one Mark Tilbury book and enjoyed it. I need to try another, and this review has me intrigued.
Zoé says
Thank you Carla! This was the first book ive read of his so I am excited to see what else he does!