Monday, July 27, 2020

Review: The Request by David Bell

The Request
by David Bell 

Publisher: Berkley
Pages: 416
Format: eARC
Buy the Book: Amazon

Goodreads:  Ryan Francis has it all--great job, wonderful wife, beautiful child--and he loves posting photos of his perfect life on social media. Until the night his friend Blake asks him to break into a woman's home to retrieve incriminating items that implicate Blake in an affair. Ryan refuses to help, but when Blake threatens to reveal Ryan's darkest secret--which could jeopardize everything in Ryan's life--Ryan has no choice but to honor Blake's request.

When he arrives at the woman's home, Ryan is shocked to find her dead--and just as shocked to realize he knows her. Then his phone chimes, revealing a Facebook friend request from the woman. With police sirens rapidly approaching, Ryan flees, wondering why his friend was setting him up for murder.

Determined to keep his life intact and to clear his name, Ryan must find the real murderer--but solving the crime may lead him closer to home than he ever could have imagined.
 


Kritters Thoughts:  How many hours a day or a week do you spend on social media?  Do you have the perfect profile and pages?  Do you envy others who seem to have the perfect life?  

This book combines great mystery thriller writing with the addition of social media and how that can impact both or our romantic relationships and friendships.  Ryan has the perfect life or so it seems via social media, he has wife, son and not one but two great jobs.  He has had a friend Blake since college and they have held onto a secret for just as long.  This secret could destroy a lot of things, so Ryan will do just about anything to keep it.

With extremely short chapters and a pacing that is ridiculous, I read this book in one day between three different sittings.  Each time I opened it, I couldn't put it down without consuming 100 pages!  

The characters in this story were great.  Each one felt so full and interesting.  No one was so unreliable that they felt ridiculous and out of place.  When each chapter ended I had a hard time putting it down and instead wanted to continue on to see where this story would end and ultimately find out who was at fault for all the things.  

My only critique of the book and its so small it seems silly to mention.  Ryan did a lot of driving in the book and was going here and there and a few times it felt unnatural for him to not stay put, but I could understand a few of them were needed to get certain plot points to happen, I would have just reworked a few of those moments.    

After finishing this book, I went to go figure out how many of David Bell's books I have read and was surprised to see I had only read two, but had rated both 5 out of 5 stars, so going to prioritize getting deep into his backlist.    


Rating: absolutely loved it and want a sequel

Ebook 2020 Challenge: 71 out of 100


Disclosure of Material Connection:  I received one copy of this book free of charge from Berkley.  I was not required to write a positive review in exchange for receipt of the book; rather, the opinions expressed in this review are my own.

No comments :

Post a Comment

Back to Top