H C Warner
STILL reeling from a painful break-up with his long-term
girlfriend, Ben Gordon can’t believe his luck when the drop-dead gorgeous Bella
breezes into his life. Sexy and clever, she’s about as close to perfect as he could
have hoped for, and it’s love at first sight for both of them. But Bella isn’t
what she seems to be… and Ben is walking headlong into a terrifying nightmare.
If you like a story with a bad girl lead player – and bad
girls don’t come more spine-chilling than the malevolent Bella – then you won’t
want to miss H C Warner’s wonderfully dark and devilishly entertaining tale of
a family that is destroyed by one young man’s catastrophic mistake.
Helen Warner, a former Head of Daytime at both ITV and
Channel 4, is on her very best form in this gripping psychological thriller
which will have you hooked from first page to last, and gasping for breath when
you discover the final killer twist.
It’s only a matter of months since Charlotte, his girlfriend
since their university days together, walked out on him and 30-year-old Ben, an
advertising executive, is still bruised and vulnerable, and struggling to come
to terms with the big gap in his life.
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| DARK TALE: Helen Warner |
But as he shares a drink with best pal Matt in a London bar,
Ben locks eyes with the ‘breathtakingly, head-turningly perfect’ Bella and has
a ‘lightning bolt moment.’ And the feeling is mutual… Bella goes home with Ben
that night and now she has never really left.
Sexy, impulsive and utterly captivating, Bella arrived in
his life just when he needed her most. Soon, she is being introduced to Ben’s
wealthy parents, Peter and Jo, who live in a grand house tucked away in the
Suffolk countryside. Jo is delighted for Ben, but Peter is suspicious. ‘She’s
like a ghost that just appeared out of nowhere.’
And before long, Ben’s family and friends have serious fears
that Bella isn’t quite the ideal partner that Ben believes her to be. Bella
wants him all to herself – because Bella has decided that everything is better
when it is just the two of them.
The truth is that Bella’s manipulative, aggressive and
increasingly violent behaviour is making it harder and harder for Ben to stay
in touch with his loved ones and when a sudden death triggers a chain of disturbing
events, there might be no way back for him....
SHE is a triumph of characterisation and suspense as Warner
tells a tale of two halves (almost literally) as the dual narrative of first
Ben, and then Bella, involves flipping over the book to read their different
accounts, and the final, haunting legacy of their ill-fated relationship.
The too-good-to-be-true Bella turns out to be just that as
Warner ratchets up the tension, exploring the cruel realities of emotional,
verbal and physical abuse within the context of a searingly graphic story full of
anger, menace and anguish.
Villainous and scheming, Bella is a truly nasty – but
undoubtedly memorable – anti-heroine whose malign antics draw you into an
intriguing, unsettling, twisting, turning story until that last shocking
revelation hits all your expectations for six. Addictive and arresting, this is Fatal Attraction for a new
generation of readers.
(HQ, paperback, £7.99)
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