I am delighted to welcome you to Books, Life and Everything today for the latest stop on the Follow Me Down Blog Tour. Today, I have an exclusive extract for you but before that, here's a little bit about the psychological thriller:
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THEY SAY ONLY THE GUILTY RUN…
Mia has built a life for herself far from the small town where she grew up. But she is forced to return home when her brother goes missing. Once the golden boy of the community, Lucas has disappeared the same day as the body of his student is pulled from the river. Unable to reconcile the media’s portrayal of Lucas as a murderer with her own memories of him, Mia is desperate to find another suspect. But if Lucas is innocent, why did he run?
Combining fractured family relationships with small town politics, Smith shoots an injection of dark humour into a book that will make you question how much you really know about the people closest to you.
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Excerpt - Follow Me Down by Sherri Smith
pages 66/67
Casey’s sports bar hadn’t changed. The sign was off, but at night
it blinked neon red with the letter “Y” shaped like a long tongue licking the
preceding letters. Inside was still the same old weathered wood, grungy, with
an unreasonable number of flat-screen TVs. It was post lunchtime, but still
fairly busy. The men looked bored; they ogled their phones as much as the
waitresses, who wore knock-off Hooters uniforms. Green and gold, like
oversized, sexed-up leprechauns.
I sat in a booth, hoping to avoid seeing anyone I might know. A
bulgy-eyed waitress named Brandy came to take my order, her green shorts pulled
up too high over her bony hips. “Anyone else joining you?” She looked worried.
Nice women don’t go to bars in Wayoata to drink alone. I had to be either
slutty or a lesbian. Slutty was the far more acceptable option. I was glad I’d
left three buttons undone on the Neiman Marcus denim top I’d changed into, just
to throw them off. “Should I leave menus?”
“No thanks. Is Zoey here?”
“Zoey starts at three, but she’s always late.”
I ordered a tomato juice the shade of Mimi’s paint job on my
shirt. A near-adequate meal replacement.
“OK, well, I’ll just leave these. Just in case.” She left two
greasy menus.
I chewed the soggy celery and looked out the window into the
parking lot, trying to shut out the whispery drone of an announcer covering a
golf tournament and the smacking sound of hot sauce being licked from fingers.
The warm, relaxed feeling of the Valium started to radiate from the back of my
neck and spread outward, wrapping itself around my shoulders like an old
friend’s embrace.
Across the street was the strip mall with a Chinese buffet
restaurant, a used women’s clothing store called Encores, and a “full-service”
beauty salon with a sign out front that read congradulations tannis.
I put the word “Gent” into
Google on my phone. “Gent + Wayoata,” “Gent + Lucas Haas.” The actor came up. I
scrolled farther down to see a list of search results for news sites with
headlines like high school teacher suspect in student’s murder, student-teacher
affair gone wrong, missing student turns up dead—teacher disappears. My
brother’s name was next to words like “suspect,” “murderer,” “vicious,”
“slaying,” and “missing,” and pictures of Joanna Wilkes’s beaming teenage face.
The story was gaining traction. It was trickling out of Wayoata, out of North
Dakota to newspapers and five o’clock news channels in Nebraska, Minnesota, and
Manitoba. It was like a bad rash that spread each time it was scratched. I
couldn’t bring myself to click on any of them.
Excerpted from Follow Me Down by Sherri Smith. © 2017 by Sherri Smith. All rights reserved. Published by Titan Books.
My Thoughts
This was an uncompromising read, with a complicated plot and really rather unlikeable characters. Mia's quest to find her twin brother and to clear his name moves relentlessly on and there are plenty of dark, twisty turns on the road. You become aware gradually how Mia's childhood has impacted on her and that you are dealing with a flawed individual who self medicates compulsively. However she has plenty of good traits. Her courage and dogged determination never waver and despite her flaws, you sympathise with her.
There are plenty of twists and turns to satisfy the reader and a surfeit of red herrings to cloud the picture. The varied cast of characters have plenty of secrets between them. As the story progresses, you never quite know who to trust and doubts creep in, as they do with Mia. The story is told through Mia's perspective, outside the police investigation. I enjoyed that aspect with the police investigation being kept very much in the background. Best of all, the ending is a genuine surprise.
In short: a clever psychological thriller with well drawn characters and far reaching family secrets.
About the Author
Sherri Smith spends time with her family and two rescue dogs, and restores vintage furniture that would otherwise be destined for the dump. She lives in Winnipeg, Canada, where the long, cold winters nurture her dark side. Follow Me Down is her first thriller.
Thanks to Phillipa Ward for a copy of the book and a place on the Blog Tour.
Follow the rest of the Tour!
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