I was so excited to read this! I started it as soon as I received it as I loved the last book by Mark Edwards (The Psychopath Next Door). The basic premise is six friends meet up for dinner after spending a summer in 1999 together, it goes back and forth between the timelines. It was a great read, it had a few twists, some suspense and I love the author’s factual basis for psychopaths and human behaviour in general. It was more of a slow burn but it definitely picked up nearer the end. The author’s writing is really good too, I look forward to reading more by this author.

1999 and a diverse group of university graduates are assembled at the house of Professor Sebastian Marlowe. A man of big ideas and the funds to implement them, Professor Marlowe has gathered these young people to help him produce an internet dating app. Not the usual matchmaking site, something far more sophisticated and thorough, and he now has the people, his revolutionaries, to help him achieve his aims.

Twenty five years later and the group are once again together, having been out of touch for years, thanks to the abrupt ending of the dating app and its launch. At a dinner party hosted by two of the original members who are now very much an extremely wealthy power couple, there is much reminiscing. That is until things take a sudden turn that is totally unexpected.

Told over the two timelines this is a captivating and thrilling read, never sure what is coming next and how will it all resolve.

An author I admire very much and this is another well thought out book, and really good read. Will definitely recommend.

Thank you NetGalley and Michael Joseph, Penguin Random House.

I’ve read a few Mark Edwards books now and I’ve always got a pretty good idea of what to expect: an ordinary person thrust into an extraordinary situation, an enjoyable easy-to-read style, some witty one-liners and a twisty plot. The Wasp Trap has all of these elements—and so much more.

It’s told over two timelines—the sultry summer of 1999 when a group of young people are brought together by a professor to work on a revolutionary new dating website, and the present day when the group is brought back together for a reunion dinner that quickly goes disastrously wrong. I loved the nostalgia of the 90s timeline and the slow drip-feed of clues about the dark events that happened that summer, while the creeping sense of unease in the reunion dinner chapters is brilliantly done.

The Wasp Trap is a locked room (or locked house!) mystery, an unsolved murder, and a missing persons case all rolled into one. It’s also a must-read and Mark Edwards best book so far.

OMG Mark Edwards certainly knows how to tell a story and this book is fantastic. I stayed up until 3am to finish it. In summer 1999 six young graduates are working for an accentric psychology professor. Fast forward 25 years and they all meet again for a dinner party.
The book is very fast paced all the way through. All the characters have secrets which are gradually exposed as the book hurtles along leaving me reeling! The book is very creepy and the feelings of dread! I felt as I read increased with every page. I didn't understand the title until I read the book, but it's very, very clever. This is definitely one of Mark Edwards best books and I know I will be revising it on Audible when it is published.

I've read a few thrillers from Mark Edwards and enjoyed them all.
We've come across similar formats before whereby something happens to friends many years ago then they all reunite in present day, usually concealing deadly secrets but it is testament to the writing skills of the author that we remain hooked in this one throughout.
Beautiful written with plenty of twists to keep it interesting, this is a well paced, engaging novel and well worth a read. .

This was my first novel by Mark Edwards. I enjoyed the story which is set in two time periods, then and now. The current part of the plot is set in a large house and, at times, it felt like a farce with people rushing from room to room or floor to floor. Also, some of the characters were a bit over the top for me. However, overall it was a decent read.

An enjoyable, intriguing thiller. I liked the dual timeline and the development of the characters. The tension really ramped up towards the end. A real page-turner.
Thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for an arc in exchange for an honest review.

My my Mark yet again not disappointing!!
A book that keeps you intrigued throughout
Beautifully written characters and developed to perfect.
Mark has this amazing way of engulfing you in the story like you’re standing over the characters watching it all play out with them.
This book had twists and turns and as always I never work anything out!
Thank you so much

3.5* Not very believable, unfortunately - you'd think that people who'd lived through what these guys did as young adults, would've had better instincts. Plus the Olivia thing? Ugh, tacked-on and inorganic. I mean, the dodgy Wi-Fi itself was enough not to make this tale believable!!

This is a tale with a backstory that makes you wonder why this bunch of people who've not seen each other since uni, who share an unsavoury past full of lies, deceipt, covering-up, kowtowing, self-serving and blackmail, have bothered getting together at the 'invite' of the couple who've come out of their past seemingly loaded. These two people feel like users who don't mind lording it over their former 'friends', and the others feel like they've come along out of curiosity and for a gander at the posh house, and a free meal and copious booze.

There was just a bit too much that was off, that was revealed too quickly and without enough subtlety from the author, that I didn't understand why the guests' alarm bells weren't ringing, nor were the male host's. Seriously, in these days of all things tech and Wi-Fi, impatience and irritation should've have featured more, potentially averting the situation these have-nothing-in-common 'guests' found themselves in. I didn't like any of them, didn't connect with them, didn't even feel for the parents of the missing teenager, and please, don't get me started on how not-believable and inorganic that was. The final reveal was just messed-up icing on a dense, not likable cake.

Unfortunately for me, this book required too much suspension of disbelief, coupled with too many characters I didn't like or care about. It was readable, but not believable.

ARC courtesy of NetGalley and Penguin Random House, Penguin Michael Joseph for my reading pleasure.

After reading so many thrillers recently and finding them all a bit too predictable I knew that #MarkEdwards would be a guaranteed hit. I was not disappointed, he always delivers.
After I hit the end of part one, I was feeling a little jaded as I thought I had the upcoming twist all sewn up. How wrong could I have been!! I love it when I'm wrong in a book and as soon as you think you know what's happened, yet another twist to the tale.
Very few thrillers actually have these much hyped up twists and turns but #TheWaspTrap definitely makes true on it's promise.
On a personal note, I love how his books are set in my homeland of East Sussex and Kent. Thank you #NetGalley for the advanced copy

Very impressed!

So this is my first book by this author and I can’t believe it’s taken me so long but also very happy I have so many of his books to go and read!!

I won’t go into basic plot except to say a professor, a group of young students. A dating website in the making and a whole host of drama!

This completely had me hooked, I enjoyed the concept, I thought the characters were great and had a lot of depth to each person, there is dual timeline which is a big favourite of mine.

There are also secrets.. lots of secrets!

100% recommend loved it

Mark Edwards delivers a captivating psychological thriller in The Wasp Trap. The novel alternates between two timelines: the summer of 1999 and the present day. Six friends reunite in London to celebrate the life of their recently deceased ex-employer, a professor who brought them together to build a dating website based on psychological testing. What starts as a nostalgic dinner party quickly turns into a sinister game, as the friends are forced to reveal their darkest secrets or face deadly consequences.

Edwards masterfully builds tension and suspense, keeping readers hooked with unexpected twists and turns. The characters are well-developed, each hiding secrets that add depth to the story. The dual timelines create a rich narrative that explores the impact of past events on the present.

The Wasp Trap is a must-read for fans of thrillers who enjoy intricate plots and psychological depth. It's a thrilling ride that will leave you questioning who you can trust.

I was delighted to be able to get an advanced copy of “The Wasp Trap”. Whenever I start reading a book by Mark, I always wonder what situation is he going to drop me in this time. While there are always characters at the centre of the story rather than making you, the reader, the protagonist, he has this knack of making the situations, at least at the start of the story, seem so relatable. And that’s often what makes them so tense and engaging.

Please note that there are some excerpts from the book which may act as spoilers.

Given the title, this book did not really start where I expected – rather in the first chapter (after a Prologue) we’re going to be at a dinner party at someone’s house. This certainly sounds relatable. However, the dinner party and the house is quite different to any I have been to – and, more than anything, points to the problems that authors often face these days… the advent of the internet and mobile phones. This is something that I have discussed before with another of my favourite authors, Sarah Lotz. It is also a challenge that I expect to be coming up against in the fourth in my series of Iwakura novels. Being isolated – so having no internet access and no mobile phone signal – is also one of the conventions that I found appear in (English-language) disaster movies. The need to continue to incorporate, and sometimes stay ahead of, current technology is very difficult for creators – and it can go horribly wrong (the James Bond movie “Die Another Day”, I’m looking at you).

In the case of “The Wasp Trap”, which has two timelines – one of which is actually directly related to advent of consumer usage of the internet, just about manages to deal with the internet/mobile-phone problem in the more contemporary (house party) timeline. It does feel a bit forced at times, but it is necessary to keep the degree of tension for, what is in effect, a small-scale disaster (as I have written about in my research what constitutes a disaster can vary from a personal situation through to larger events that make the news) and where isolation is key to allowing the story to proceed.

As usual there were a few particular bits of text that stood out for me that I found either helped provide insights into the characters or more general points. For example,
"It was like being a work experience kid on the Manhattan Project."
Given my own interest in the Manhattan Project (see, for example, In the Shadow of the Mushroom Cloud: 75 Years since the Atomic Bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Book Review: “The World Set Free” by HG Wells, and A Collection of Audiobook Reviews (3)) and referring to it in one of my classes the same week that I was reading the book, I particularly liked this analogy.

The protagonist is a wannabe-novelist, so even compared to Mark’s typical novels, it was especially easy for me to relate to him. I could relate to the following
"if I was ever going to write something worthwhile, I should do what I always advised my students to do and draw on my own life?"
Actually, I have done this not only with my novels, but also with my research. Autoethnography is an important aspect of research and something that happens more than is often acknowledged. It is also something that I recommend my students, final year students and post-graduate students especially, to do.

Unfortunately I could also relate to the following comment about a university where
"they were always threatening to close the course, especially in recent years when all the focus was on STEM subjects."
A few weeks before I started reading “The Wasp Trap” I got the news that my university, Cardiff University, is planning on closing down all its language programmes, including the Japanese programme that I lecture on. I got the notice of my potential redundancy the next morning. Although I have posted about this on social media, I have yet to do a blog post about it, but may well do soon.

The protagonist has feelings for one of the other key characters, Sophie, and I love some of the descriptions of the interactions with her, such as
"I took one end of a sofa, with Sophie beside me. It felt good having her that close to me."
and
"When she left the room I was keenly aware of her absence. If she smiled at me or touched me casually during a conversation, I would experience a rush of elation and longing. I closed my eyes and saw her face. So this is love, I remember thinking"
and
"she saw me only as a friend and colleague, and even though I didn’t only want to be in the friend zone, I valued that too highly to risk ruining everything by blurting out how I felt. So I stayed quiet, while still spending as much time in her company as I could."
and
"I’m acting like a moron because proximity to you melts my brain."
and
"I caught my breath when she passed me the phone and her fingers brushed mine. I wondered if she could feel me trembling, hear my heartbeat. I could smell her, the heat coming off her body, the faint odour of fresh sweat mixed with a perfume I couldn’t identify. It made my head swim. I’m sure she must have known the effect she was having on me because she was silent. We both were, just breathing."
When another of the key characters, Lily, asks the protagonist, Will, why he hasn’t done anything about his feelings for Sophie, I think the interaction is really good –
"‘What’s stopping you?’
‘Isn’t it obvious? Fear of being rejected.’ She tutted.
‘So what? If she says she just wants to be friends or whatever, just accept it and move on. That’s got to be better than never knowing.’ She waited for my response. ‘What is it?’
‘I’m scared that she’ll laugh at me.’"

During one of the moment’s when Will is trying to buy them more time in their difficult situation, he ponders the following,
"Telling my story would buy me ten or fifteen minutes. Maybe a miracle would happen. An alien invasion. Nuclear war. An earthquake. We could but hope. And who knew? Perhaps unburdening myself of it before I left this mortal coil might make my spirit lighter as it flew up – or plummeted down."
This idea that something even more awful, such as an alien invasion, nuclear war, or earthquake may be a salvation reminds me of the ‘Yatta!‘ moment in “Zom 100: Bucket List of the Dead” when the protagonist realises he doesn’t need to worry about going to work as there are zombies everywhere.

Another insightful comment in “The Wasp Trap” was
"There were theories that many of the most powerful people in the world were psychopaths, and some of them were able to do more damage than their criminal counterparts."
This sentence seems particular topical at the moment given the leadership of USA, Tesla, Russia, and Israel, amongst others.

Overall, this book is another to add to the ‘classic Mark Edwards’ collection and I highly recommend it.

Another brilliant thriller from this author. Cleverly weaving between two timelines a dinner party’s guests are reunited years after working together on a romance website for an eccentric professor. The party takes a sinister turn where everyone is forced to reveal past secrets and builds to a violent climax with lots of trademark plot twists the author is so good at. There’s a lot going on in both timelines but the pace is perfectly executed.

This was a slow start, so slow I nearly gave up but glad I didn’t.
When Georgina & Theo’s daughter goes missing and they invite their old friends over for dinner as it’s been years since they have seen them since they all worked together on a project together.
Does anyone know what happened to their daughter? Could it be caused by a secret from over 20 years ago.
As I said very slow burn for me but interesting once the accusations start to fly.
Thank you Marl Edwards & Net Galley for an advanced copy.

Brilliant! The story is set in a single night when some old friends meet up for dinner. I couldn’t imagine that this one night and one house/dinner party can be made so interesting. Lots of twists and turns and I just couldn’t put the book down. The plot was great and the book was so fast paced that it kept me hooked since the first page. Mark has churned out another bestseller - kudos to him! I thoroughly enjoyed reading this and definitely recommend it.
Thank you to the publishers Penguin RandomHouseuk for an advanced copy of this ebook and giving me a chance to review this book!

A duel timeline story about a group of people who worked on developing a dating app twenty five years ago. Most of them haven’t seen each other since then but when the app creator dies they are all invited to a dinner party.
A twisty psychological thriller that I found a bit slow at times but overall I enjoyed the story.
Thank you to NetGalley and Michael Joseph, Penguin Random House for my e-copy in exchange for an honest review.

The King of psychological thrillers is back with one of his most gripping novels yet.

Six friends. One reunion. Many deadly secrets. In 1999, Will and five other graduates were handpicked by a psychology professor to invent the latest in online dating, one that could change the dating world. But nothing went according to plan. Fast forward 25 years and Will has been invited to a reunion dinner, but all is not as it seems.

Mark Edwards has written a fast-paced, gripping, locked room mystery-style novel that I found completely unpredictable, with Mark's signature dark twists scattered throughout. I was so absorbed in this book that I read it in only a few sittings, grabbing it at any chance I could get as I couldn't get it off my mind. Just as you think you've got it figured out Mark throws another twist into the mix and makes you question everything.

In 1999, six recent graduates work for a psychology professor on a revolutionary new dating website. Twenty-five years later they gather for a reunion dinner to remember the late professor. But what really happened back then? What secrets does each dinner guest hold? And how many of them will get out of the dinner alive?

With a large cast of characters, dual timelines and twists, the book is another solid, straightforwardly told suspense story from this bestselling author. Fans of Mark Edwards know what to expect and won’t be disappointed.

With thanks to the author, publisher and NetGalley for the opportunity to read an early copy in exchange for an independent review.

On publication, I will post my review on my blog.

Mark Edwards knows how to write a good thriller and The Wasp Trap is yet another piece of brillance! He's come a long way since The Magpies (one of my all time faves) and this is yet another shocking and punchy thriller that left me wanting more. Taut and twisty, but nuanced too, I loved it.