Although it took me a chapter or two to get into the book I was then hooked. What a tremendous read. I am a great fan of books like this with all its twists and turns. It was beautifully written. It was gripping and very hard to put down. Just rewind, fast forward, pause and play and you have a thrilling read. It ended too soon for me - the sign of a tremendous read.

I hate to admit it, but this is my first novel by Catherine Ryan Howard. How could I have missed her novels? I found REWIND engrossing, addictive, and twisty and I am already choosing her next novel to read.

A young rising instagrammer who is missing; a journalist looking for the truth; a creepy cottages manager hiding his dark secrets; a woman obsessively in love. Those are the protagonists of the thrilling new novel by Catherine Ryan Howard. They are intriguing and very different: I couldn’t give you a description of Natalie and Audrey, because there is not much to say about them apart that they are both looking for the truth. Andrew and Ickie Dick (or Richard) are creepy and I would never want to be alone with one of them, not during the day and certainly not at night, for example, in a deserted car park. And then there is Jennifer. She is a complex character and I didn’t like her or trust her from the beginning.

Now the setting. You know when you are watching a thriller or horror movie and the protagonists stop for a night in a isolated motel where there is a creepy owner and they are the only guests and you thing “that’s such a bad idea”? That’s what I though while I was reading about Shanamore Holiday Cottages. Isolated? Check. Eerie atmosphere? Check. Sinister and scary manager? Oh yes. Strange noises inside the cottage? Of course.

REWIND is fast-paced and highly suspenseful and, even though I kind of figure out what it was going on while I was reading and the different timelines left me confused at times – it was hard to figure out where I was in the story -, this is a rollercoaster of a reading and I was so addicted that I didn’t stop until I got to the end.

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Brill book. I enjoyed it,a creepy story,think twice on when you book a holiday cottage! Well written.

Review
If you have only read the blurb and are unsure about whether to read this book, then that’s how I felt. But the blurb just does not do the book justice at all, in fact it’s more, so much more.

Natalie is an instagram blogger, married to Mike. They have moved into a nice new house, she has an envious lifestyle making money from brand advertising. But she has started to notice things go awry - doors unlocking themselves, items missing. And who is the woman with the blonde ponytail and thick black glasses that she keeps seeing? Mike says she’s just being paranoid.

A credit card receipt of Mike’s leads Natalie to No 6 Shannamore Cottages where she meets Andrew, the manager. And ultimately her death.

Andrew is a very odd character who had a sad and lonely childhood until he meets Caroline and for that one lovely year, he feels love. After Caroline moves away, no-one can replace her, as much as he tries.

I really liked Audrey, an entertainments reporter for People.ie. She was given the opportunity to work on the story of Natalie going missing for one day. However, once Audrey starts on the story, she realises that this is her opportunity to prove herself to get that job as a news reporter. And she works to solve the mystery.

The initial part of the book was good, though a slow starter for me but once it got going, it really really got going! I then could not put it down. It’s opened my eyes, I might be naive but do things like that really happen in hotel rooms? I will be cautious whenever I stay in the future!!!

An excellent book and I rate it 5 stars 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟

Thanks
Thank you to the author Catherine Ryan Howard and publishers Atlantic Books for an advanced copy of this ebook in exchange for an independent review.

Although this is not especially innovative or original, it's still an enjoyable thriller concerning the murder of an Instagram influencer. Set in Ireland, the story opens with a brutal murder and then time hops around to reveal whodunit and why.

An easy read, this is the kind of book you want to read on a day off when you're looking for something fun but not too challenging.

Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC without obligation.

A very modern story,a very creepy story. Characters very well portrayed but not particularly engaging. Some red herrings along the way.

Psycho meets Fatal Attraction in this explosive story about a twisted voyeur and a terrible crime

PLAY
Andrew, the manager of Shanamore Holiday Cottages, watches his only guest via a hidden camera in her room. One night the unthinkable happens: a shadowy figure emerges onscreen, kills her and destroys the camera. But who is the murderer? How did they know about the camera? And how will Andrew live with himself?

PAUSE
Natalie wishes she'd stayed at home as soon as she arrives in the wintry isolation of Shanamore. There's something creepy about the manager. She wants to leave, but she can't - not until she's found what she's looking for...

REWIND
This is an explosive story about a murder caught on camera. You've already missed the start. To get the full picture you must rewind the tape and play it through to the end, no matter how shocking...

This is the first book I've read by this author and it took a while to get used to the back and forth between timelines, Play, Pause, Rewind and Fast forward but there were some great twists in the book and when the killer was revealed it was a surprise, although the ending was a little abrupt for me it's a great thriller that keeps you guessing what will happen next.

I'd like to thank Atlantic Books Circus for the approval and will post my review on Amazon and Goodreads.

This is a very dark and scary story which will make you think twice about booking a holiday cottage just for you, even if you do think you'll get more writing done. If it's anything like Shanamore Cottages, you won't. Catherine Ryan Howard knows how to put the wind up us, and if you have any kind of online public persona it will give you the heebyjeebies. Natalie, an Instagram star from Ireland thinks her husband is having an affair which doesn't chime with the picture perfect life she portrays on Instagram. She's sure she's being followed by a woman with a blonde ponytail and dark rimmed geeky glasses but Mike, her husband, is sure she's being paranoid. When she goes to the place, Shanamore Holiday Cottages, where she thinks he's been conducting his affair, she is confronted by the inhabitants of a strange little village who make her search less than simple. I enjoyed this novel but wasn't sure about the ending, and had worked out who the culprit was, although thought there could have been a bigger connection beween the culprit and Natalie, a missed opportunity I thought, but that's just me. I still loved it. 4 super stars.

Catherine Ryan Howard's REWIND is a dark and skin-crawling mystery that revolves around a murder in an isolated holiday cottage - an incident that is not only planned, but recorded and capitalised upon for somebody's personal gain. Irish Instagram star Natalie, faced with evidence that her husband has been having an affair, goes offline to follow the trail and isn't seen again, except by several highly suspicious characters and one hidden camera. Meanwhile, down-on-her-luck Audrey, an online gossip reporter, is desperate to uncover the truth about Natalie's disappearance and finds herself right in the midst of the story and its players.

REWIND has a great page-turning quality to it, with a cast full of questionable characters and dodgy motivations at the least, extending to fully evil humans who will do whatever they will to others, regardless of the consequences. The writing is deeply creepy and unnerving (I recommend you don't plan on going to any out-of-the-way holiday cottages by yourself any time soon) and the story is compellingly twisted.

My only negative point is with the time stamps given at the start of each chapter as the action moved back and forth in time. There were given as digital video stamps but they didn't really help me recognise where I was in the timeline - although I can see they make a nice addition to the book, stylistically speaking.

Not only is REWIND a dark mystery of satisfying proportions, but it's a cold and calculating look at what can happen when Instafame - and one's life in the technological world - turns sour. I would definitely read more by Catherine Ryan Howard.

I always feel more conscient when i have to travel and we need to stay at a hotel or rent something while we're on holidays just because of the privacy breaches and this book is the definition on why i feel like that.
A fast-paced read, i finished it in a few hours because i just couldn't stop reading, a mix of characters that deserves an OSCAR premium for the mental health issues and behaviour showed as well as a rollercoaster of emotions because there are so many twists and turns that won't leave space for a break. It's scary at times, may not be for everyone but it's a very good story that needs to be read by everyone who loves the genre.

What a read! The twisted tale told on tape. With a stop, start and rewind, this really is a chilling murder driven by passion. The narrative has a very unique and engaging style, and keeps you on the edge of your seat. A must have!

Brilliant book. Totally different and had me hooked. Loved the writing style. I will definitely be reading more by this author.

PLAY

Andrew, the manager of Shanamore Holiday Cottages, watches his only guest via a hidden camera in her room. One night the unthinkable happens: a shadowy figure emerges on-screen, kills her, and destroys the camera. But who is the murderer? How did they know about the camera? And how will Andrew live with himself?

PAUSE

Natalie wishes she’d stayed at home as soon as she arrives in the wintry isolation of Shanamore. There’s something creepy about the manager. She wants to leave, but she can’t—not until she’s found what she’s looking for …

REWIND

Psycho meets Fatal Attraction in this explosive story about a murder caught on camera. You’ve already missed the start. To get the full picture you must rewind the tape and play it through to the end, no matter how shocking …

Natalie O' Connor is a successful social influencer with thousands of followers on Instagram. Her posts make her life seem idyllic but, as we soon find out, it's far from perfect. When she suddenly disappears, her husband Mike makes a heart-felt plea for her return. Audrey, a would-be crime reporter working for an online publication, investigates Natalie's disappearance, suspecting that she just needed some time to herself. But, as Audrey looks closer at Natalie's life and visits Shanamore Holiday Cottages, the last place Natalie was seen, she discovers that there's a lot more going on both in Natalie's life and in the cottages than anyone had known.

As a fellow Corkonian, the most pervasively creepy part of the book is the authenticity of its setting in County Cork. I've stayed in places similar to Shanamore Holiday Cottages in the middle of nowhere around Ireland and have experienced the uneasy feeling that I'm being watched and that anyone could be loitering outside. Likewise, as a city girl, the thought of being stuck in the middle of rural Ireland is similarly anxiety inducing. I've also experienced the stony atmosphere in tiny, close-knit towns around rural Ireland where visitors are made to feel like outsiders, despite the stereotype of the Irish being exceeding welcoming. Howard captures these feelings perfectly.

The characters of Natalie and Audrey are extremely well written and recognisable but there are also plenty of suspicious characters in the book. Andrew, the manager of Shanamore Holiday Cottages, is creepy from the outset and we soon learn about his sordid background. There's also Richard, a man who hangs around the cottages, and who follows women around the town. We're also not sure about how Natalie's husband Mike is involved in her disappearance.

Like a lot of other crime fiction at the moment, the book is about the dangers of social media, particularly in this case, Instagram and the dangers of living your life online. From being plagued by fans to not being able to escape being recognised, Natalie's life is portrayed as being claustrophobic and she's always suspicious of everyone around her. In this sense, we're also suspicious of her fans and of the people trying to make their way into her life. 

The book is masterfully plotted with multiple storylines that are punctuated with timestamps and the terms Rewind, Play, Pause, and Fast Forward to introduce the different timelines and characters.  Yet, although there are multiple characters and subplots, they are all extremely well developed and are always easy to follow. I don't want to say too much about these subplots as there is so much going on in the book but, needless to say, the ending is explosive and unlike anything I've read recently. It's a very believable scenario that plays on our innate paranoia and anxiety about public spaces.

Catherine Ryan Howard is one of the most creative crime fiction writers working today. I really enjoyed Howard's first novel, Distress Signals (2016) and, like Rewind, it's wonderfully plotted and has a very unique setting. I haven't read The Liar's Girl (2018) yet but it's next on my list. It's fantastic that a Cork crime writer has finally emerged to put us on the map and I look forward to many more from Howard and others that are inspired by her. 

Thanks to Catherine Ryan Howard, Corvus, and NetGalley for providing an advanced review copy for my honest review.

A very inventive way of writing a story. This one kept me guessing throughout it had an element of psycho a film that have truly transfixed me when I first watched it and a film that changed my way of watching films. The characters weren’t extremely likeable but they did add to the intrigue.

With Instagram influencer Natalie goes off grid and then mysteriously disappears it is up to celebrity reporter Audrey to step up and try and find out what has happened to her – but who is watching her every move?

Rewind is a thriller with an interesting narrative technique – chapters which jump around in timeline like a video tape. The chapters themselves are labelled ‘Play’ ‘Pause’ ‘Rewind’ or ‘Fast Forward’ to tell the story. This makes for a nice way to change perspectives and give a different overview of the same sequence of events and the writing itself is easy to read and get engaged with. However, although the plot itself also has a link to recording equipment I didn’t really feel like it went far enough in this element. Each heading came with a time counter, but I didn’t really understand what these were in relation to. It would have been better if the time of the crime was a specific reference and everything else worked around that but that didn’t seem to be the case here – with characters having flashbacks to their days at school and this still being included in the timer. Perhaps including a date as well would have made it feel more like a coherent link between the chapters or a T- situation with the crime being 00:00:00? I also felt for what could have been a very strong link, the idea of the crime revolving around a recording was actually weaker than it could have been. It was skimmed over a bit towards the beginning of the book and only really makes an appearance right towards the end of the story.

There are a lot of characters in the book and I felt they were well written and given some depth – Andrew, Audrey and Natalie were particularly strong but some I didn’t really feel were explored well enough. I think my main problem with Rewind was that from all of the clues presented in the plot it was pretty easy to guess what had happened to Natalie and why. This took away any shock twists the story may have had and left the ending, which basically just explains what happened without adding anything extra, feel limp and anti-climactic.

Overall Rewind has a nice narrative technique but ended up being a little under-developed and predictable for me. Thank you to Netgalley & Atlantic Books – Corvus for the chance to read the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Instagram star Natalie believes her husband is having an affair, but as soon as she arrives at the holiday cottages in remote Shanamore, Cork, where she believes the lovers' tryst took place, she wishes she had stayed at home in Dublin.
There is something very creepy about the manager of the cottages and she is sure he is lying about what he knows, but she cannot leave until she knows the truth.

Andrew, the manager of the Shanamore Cottages has plenty to hide. At night he watches his guests on cameras hidden in the bedrooms, until the one night when a shadowy figure appears on the video feed and kills one of his patrons. Andrew must keep the crime secret, or risk losing it all.

Audrey is a journalist looking into the disappearance of Natalie and has traced her movements to the remote Shanamore, where she unknowingly books into the same cottage where Natalie stayed. Can she solve the mystery of Natalie's disappearance?

Rewind is a highly original and compelling story about a murder caught on camera. It plays heavily on the concept of secret recordings and splits the story into different timelines using the appropriate terminology - REWIND for Natalie's story; FAST FORWARD and PLAY for the present; and PAUSE for the "other woman" - with a final STOP at the conclusion. This works brilliantly well and means you can never forget that this revolves around the recording of a murder.

There are wonderful echoes of Psycho about this book, with enough of the Lolitas to turn your stomach too, and it will totally creep you out!

The story builds the tension gradually and I loved how it unfolds by jumping between the different timelines. I did think the end was a little rushed and would have liked to see the conclusion played out a little longer (pardon the pun), but maybe this is because I did not want it to end and is actually a compliment to the writing skills of Catherine Ryan Howard!

It is hard to say very much about the story without giving away spoliers, which I am not going to do, but suffice to say that this is absolutely gripping and it will terrify you every time you have to stay in a hotel or holiday let in the future.....and will make you think again about what you post on Instagram!!!

Natalie, a woman with thousands of Instagram followers, needs to get away for a while and so ends up 150 miles away from Cork at a short-term rental in the remote community of Shanamore . So far, so ordinary. Unfortunately, if you have a high public profile and a popular daily blog, your going "offline" gets noticed and Audrey, a fanatically keen junior reporter for an online newspaper, is tasked with finding where Natalie has gone to. Audrey's tenaciousness ultimately pays off but there are plenty of thrills and even a murder along the way. But the real link between what sent Natalie off to Shanamore and what happens while she is there is what makes this story so gripping. It takes the ever tenacious Audrey to help the Guardai solve the mystery. Catherine Howard, in Rewind, has crafted a splendidly complex tale that shall keep you reading to the very last page.

Great book - an intriguing and modern psychological thriller set in different time frames. A tale of murder, stalking, Instagram and dubious characters set in Ireland. I’d like to find out more about the main protagonist so hope there will be future books in the series.

A female blogger called Natalie disappears from her home and her social media accounts , she turns up to rent a holiday cottage in a place called Shanamore . This is run by a loner character called Andrew who it turns out has a camera hidden in a clock to watch his guests . She is traced to this cottage by a journalist Rachel . She is put in the same cottage Natalie was in and sets out to find out where she has gone to . She talks to people in the village who have seen her . A "handyman" Richard meets her on the beach and appears to be stalking her . Richard then finds Natalie's body near the sea and becomes a suspect . Andrew receives a film by email of Natalie being murdered in the cottage and the killer wrecking the camera . Who has done this and why ? A tale of blackmail and paedophilia unfolds as the killer is found .

The idea of starting a story with the crime then retracing what happened and who it involved is not a new one, but the way in which this book relates the tale is certainly different. Set in Ireland it's the story of Natalie O'Connor, a social media influencer with a large following who announces she is going off line for a few days and that people shouldn't worry about her. She'll be back soon. But someone has other plans for her, the result of which are recorded by a hidden camera in the cottage she stays at.

There is only a relatively small cast of characters in this book, but even with just a few suspects to choose from the author still manages to keep us guessing as to who has committed the ultimate crime and whether anyone else is involved. The two main suspects are resident in the area surrounding Shanamore Cottages. From their personalities one would say that either of them could be responsible: both loners, both rather odd individuals, one with a big secret. Or do they both? And why did Natalie's husband not report her missing sooner?

The descriptions of the out of season, secluded coastal region are excellent in creating a creepy atmosphere and the set up of the cluster of 6 cottages all overlooking one another just adds to the feeling of someone watching Natalie as she tries to find answers to the questions she came here for.

The story is extremely unsettling but addictive in its own way. It's a book I would have loved to be able to read in one sitting and certainly didn't end the way I expected. Not one to read in the dark on your own!