Crikey the author tackles some difficult and harrowing subjects in this novel, but it does it with great panache and empathy. Wow, does it pack a punch and is in turn horrifying, scary and heart-breaking.
Firstly, let me declare it a thoroughly gripping read, a real Who? What? Omg! Page turner. I highly recommend it to anyone who enjoys reading complex twisty thrillers and isn’t too sensitive to read a fair amount of gruesome detail on the subjects of child abuse and rape, mental illness, murder and a soupcon of gay sex thrown in.
This is a psychological thriller at its very best, it grabs you by the throat from the outset, introduces you to a whole bunch of great characters lets you warm to them then makes you suspect them of all manner of misdeeds. It is that rare mix of character driven and storyline driven novel, which make it exciting, eventful and at times chaotic. It also caused me to reveal some prejudices I felt ashamed of when I was guilty of disbelieving at least one character, whom I should have had the courage to trust.
I did find the rather disjointed beginning confusing, with several short, seemingly unrelated incidents all serving to confuse the reader. Don’t let this put you off – roll with it, put them to one side as the story will throw them at you later and you will go Ahhh, NOW I understand!
The main protagonists are two women, there is Mags, strong, feisty, determined and a successful lawyer, we meet her on a plane, on her way back to the UK after a long time living in America, to be at the bedside of her brother Abe, from whom she is almost totally estranged, not having spoken to him since she left home at 16.
Already at his bedside is Jody, who introduces herself as Abe’s fiancé, about whom Mags knew nothing. Jody is Mags polar opposite, she is quiet, nervous, shy and neurotic, yet that she completely adored Abe is never in question.
However both women share something in common – traumatic upbringings which have shaped them into what they have become today. It’s not clear from the outset, when we regress to past events, who exactly they are happening to and this causes apprehension and mystery to develop.
We are never quite sure who is bad, who is sad and whether many folk are a little bit mad, it really put me through the mill of emotions.
Mags begins to have cause to doubt some of Jody’s story and has to decide whether she is being deliberately deceitful, is mad as a box of frogs or maybe she is just confused and grief stricken?
This multi-layered story took me places I never want to go, from the bedside of a dying man who can’t tell us how he sustained these mortal injuries, to the mind of a horrifically abused innocent 7 year old, to a tense courtroom drama, where I willed a vile creature to be punished for their crimes.
From a confusing beginning it only gets better and better as the tension ramps up and secrets and past evils emerge.
If ever a book was guaranteed to make you feel hatred and loathing for certain characters and events, it is this one, however it is also a story of revenge and redemption and I actually found the ending rather uplifting.

Thank you to Netgalley for the opportunity to read this book as an arc. This was a book I had heard so many good things about and it certainly didn't disappoint. It is a very dark psychological thriller with plenty of twists and turns. The three main characters, Abe who is in a coma after a fall, his distraught fiancee Jody and his estranged sister Mags, have all had traumatic childhoods and are trying to escape from their pasts.
This is a really interesting book, I loved the setting of the old church, developed into flats where Abe and Jody live, also the descriptions and back stories of the other residents who we are introduced to. We find out what happened to the main characters through flashbacks to their childhoods and some of it is a very harrowing and upsetting read. Our perceptions of them change throughout the book as the story unravels and nothing is as it seems.
This is a great read, I thoroughly enjoyed it. Very atmospheric and claustrophobic at times, it is both unsettling and upsetting, the signs of a classic psychological thriller.

WARNING

This riviting psychological thriller contains some quite graphic descriptions of child abuse and rape that some readers might find upsetting.

The main characters in this twisted tale are

Mags - a corporate lawyer who lives in Vegas but has had to make a emergency trip to London because her brother is in a coma after a accident.
Abe - Mags estranged brother
Jody - Abe`s broken and emotionally unstable fiance
Mira -Abe and Jody`s neighbour who may or may not know more about Abe`s accident than she is letting on.

The story is told from the alternative perspectives of Mags,Jody and Mira with some of the chapters containing flashbacks to events from Abe,Mags and Jody`s pasts.I didn't like Mags,I thought she was a very unlikable and unsympathetic,heartless character.Jody`s story was so heartbreaking and sad you needed to have had a heart of stone not to feel quite a lot of sympathy for her and it was easy to understand why she was so broken and messed up.I would have liked to have known more about Abe and wish that there had been more chapters that were told from his perspective.

I loved the descriptions of the converted church where Abe,Jody and Mira lived,as you read the story you could picture the sun shining through the stained glass windows and casting colourful shadows on the floorboards and hear in your head the clanking pipes and the sounds coming from the homes of the other colourful characters that lived in the building.

The only thing that slightly spoiled this gripping thriller for me was the court case towards the end which contained elements that were unbelievable and unrealistic.Apart from that I thoroughly enjoyed this well written debut thriller and look forward to reading more books by this author in the future.

Tattle tale by sarah naughton is a psychological thriller read.
Once upon a time, there was a little girl who believed in fairytales. Now she is out to get your happy ending.
One day changes Jody's life forever.
She has shut herself down, haunted by her memories and unable to trust anyone. But then she meets Abe, the perfect stranger next door and suddenly life seems full of possibility and hope.
One day changes Mags' life forever.
After years of estrangement from her family, Mags receives a shocking phone call. Her brother Abe is in hospital and no-one knows what happened to him. She meets his fiance Jody, and gradually pieces together the ruins of the life she left behind.
But the pieces don't quite seem to fit...
This was a fantastic read with brilliant characters. Although a little slow to start with it soon picked up. Full of twists and plots. Highly recommended 5*. I voluntarily reviewed an advanced copy of this book from netgalley

I love unusual settings in books and this one was stunning. Set in a renovated church which has been altered and now houses vulnerable or adults in need, the stained glass windows divided between flats giving different colours depending which part of the building you are in. Jody lives in a flat in the building as did Abe, the young man who has been found in a pool of blood at the bottom of the stairs. Now in a coma, his next of kin Mags (Mary Magdalene) has been summoned back from her job as a lawyer in Vegas to the UK as she is his next of kin. Mags and Abe are not close and Mags doesn’t endear herself to the nurses caring for Abe or Jodie, in large part due to her remoteness to Abe.
This is a cleverly layered psychological thriller which demands careful attention. The main mystery is was Abe, as the police believe, suicidal? Or was he pushed over the bannisters? Jody doesn’t believe her boyfriend would leave her, they’d just returned from a night out and he was checking the door was closed properly against intruders, he had no reason to kill himself.
Mags doesn’t know what to think. She didn’t know Abe but it is clear early on that the two shared a difficult childhood where the rule of divide and conquer meant the two were locked in a life of self-preservation. The obvious consequence being was that if the other was the focus of the negative attention, all the better. What happened in their early life is slowly revealed over the course of the book giving a rich background to both characters. All the more important as we only view Abe through the eyes of those around him.
Jody comes across as a fairly passive character, her devotion to Abe unstinting and she is willing Abe to recover although the prognosis is, at best, bleak but she is also damaged by her past and to boot has received a caution for falsely crying rape. What the truth of Jody’s past is another mystery.
There are some really tough scenes to read in this book and although they are integral to the plot, it does make for difficult reading at times. On balance although we hear from both Jody and Mags in depth with some excerpts which I initially attributed to completely the wrong character, this is a plot led book. The rights and wrongs of the way this plot develops giving the reader an opportunity to question the morals of the tale, which for me overshadowed to a large extent, the characters that are behind it. While I felt sympathy for the damaged inhabitants of the church building, I also felt distanced from them, this is in part due to the problem with unreliable narrators, whether that unreliability is understandable or not!
This doesn’t have the fast pace of some psychological thrillers and I did find it took me a while to ‘place’ the characters in the early part of the book until their individual voices developed. While the narration of the other inhabitants of the church adding their details to those of Jody and Mags builds to give a fuller picture of the critical moments in the plot, for a while it just felt as if the story was becoming ever more murky, but full credit to the author, the pulling together of these stories was exceptionally well done. Sarah J Naughton has produced a psychological thriller with a unique feel.
I’d like to thank the publishers Orion, for allowing me to read a copy of Tattletale, the first book for adults by Sarah J Naughton, ahead of publication on 23 March 2017.

This review is written with thanks to Orion Publishing Group and Netgalley for my copy of Tattletale.
Mags is a lawyer living in America, who flies over to the UK when she learns that her estranged brother, Abe, is in a coma after an accident. When she visits him, she meets his fiancee, Jody, and moves into his home, a flat in a converted church. As she gets to know the people in Abe's life, she gets the feeling that she has not been told the truth about his accident. Will Mags find out what really happened to Abe?
Tattletale is a slow burner. It begins with a woman calling an ambulance, followed by a party scene, and it was difficult for me to see how the two events were connected until the end, and this makes the first half of the book feel a little disjointed. The characters of Mags and Jody felt a little cold,. and I found it hard to connect emotionally with them, despite the alternating first person narratives of Mags, Jody and Mira, which allow the reader to think about what has happened from different points of view. However, this style of narration comes into its own later in the novel, when it becomes clear when some aspects of Abe's life have been lied about or misunderstood, as this makes the reader unsure about what happened and makes them eager to find out.
The residents in the flats where Jody and Abe live are a diverse mix of people and are all vulnerable to some extent. This gives Naughton the opportunity to raise issues such as drug use, mental illness and asylum seekers. These are important issues for today's society, and I am pleased that Tattletale reflected the diverse nature of our communities. However, I was disappointed that the issues were not explored in greater depth, as this may have helped me to connect with the characters more easily.
There are several twists in Tattletale, which kept me gripped, especially towards the end. However, I felt that the climax of the novel was a little rushed, and I would have liked this part of the plot to have been covered in more detail.
Overall, I did find the plot of Tattletale engaging, but given that the book is fairly short, I believe that extra length would have allowed Naughton to explore issues in more detail, and created a richer novel.

This book captures you from the very beginning and tells the starts with an accident. Abe falls from a height and is in a serious condition in hospital. Jody was in a relationship with Abe and is devastated. There has to be an investigation into how the accident occurred which makes for some dark developments.

The setting of the story is a big part of the book to me and I could picture the old church which has been developed into small flats housing a variety of different, mostly with difficult backgrounds. I loved the descriptions of the tenants and their introduction to the story. Mags, Abe's sister, arrives from Las Vegas where she is a top lawyer, and is not a very nice character. She is not the caring type which made me doubt her being there for her brother.

The book is written in short chapters which made it easier to read but hard to put down. It is a dark psychological thriller which is a 5* read.

I really enjoyed Tattletale. It's one of those books that sets the scene implicitly and draws you in without you realising it.

I found it to be very well written with great characterisation and made me always just want to read one more chapter.

This is the first book I've read by Sarah J Naughton and I can't wait to read more of her work.

Thank you to NetGalley, Orion Publishing Group and the author for the chance to review.

WOW. What can I say other than I loved this book. There is not much more I can say otherwise my review old be full of spoilers

I do recommend that you get yourself a. Copy of this book. I'm sure you will love it too. Well written with an ending that's unexpurgated.

I would like to thank Nety, Orion Publishing and the author Sarah J. Naughton for my ARC in exchange for an honest review.

When Mags receives a telephone call to tell her that her estranged brother Abe is seriously ill in hospital following an accident, she drops everything to fly home from Las Vegas to be with him. When she arrives at the hospital she is shocked by the condition he is in, but more so by the woman she meets at his bedside - Abe's fiance, Jody. Having shared nothing but a few Christmas cards with Abe since she left home at sixteen, Mags knew nothing about the woman in front of her, a woman she now has to accept as almost a part of her family.

Jody is a timid woman, her love for Abe so very clear and her devastation at his injuries beyond doubt. Abe had been her saviour, a man who had given her respite from her fears and who had saved her life both metaphorically and literally.

As Mags tries hard to avoid the reality of her brother's condition, frustrated that as his next of kin the decisions over his care will be hers to make, she begins to wonder just how the accident occurred. The accident happened in Abe's apartment block, a former church where acoustics mean that every tiny knock can be heard throughout the building, how can it be that not one person saw or heard anything?

The more she tries to find the truth about that fateful night, the more questions she is faced with and soon she begins to realise that Abe's accident is not as clear cut as people would have her believe.

…

From the very opening chapter I was sucked into this book. We join the action immediately following Abe's accident and the description of the scene, of Jody's slow dawning realisation of what has happened is very striking and feels real. All the small elements are here, the patterns and images of the blood, the way each landing extinguishes, floor by floor by floor, and it builds brilliantly to a point of final understanding that leaves you breathless before you've really even begun.

From here, the pace slows a little. We are given an almost rude introduction to Mags, to her impatience and confidence, so valuable to her as a top lawyer in Vegas, but so out of place when dealing with a grieving fiance and hospital staff who want nothing more tan to treat her brother. We can see from the off she is a polar opposite to Jody, and as the story progresses, that her character couldn't be further from the picture that everyone painted of Abe. But what made her this way. It is clear something happened to the pair in their childhood, but not what. Mags is a prickly character, but her inquiring mind won't settle and her tenacity, her determination to find the truth is something which endeared her to me, even is she was lacking in many other social graces. She is closed off to almost everyone so it would be easy to not like her, but Naughton has written Mags really well so that it is her strength of character which makes her likeable.

Jody is a very complex character. She clearly has issues, but then this is no surprise given that she is living in an apartment block which caters for people with special situations, such as former addicts, care home children and the like, letting them get on their feet. She is a gentle, highly emotional soul, quiet and unassuming, a contrast to Mags more direct character. She immediately feels likeable and yet a little on the pathetic side. Her devotion to Abe is clear, very romantic. It is almost a fairy tale kind of world that she lives in. And yet she is not as simple as she seems either, her true character every bit as layered as Mags.

Told mainly from both Mags and Jody's perspectives. There are also some chapters set in the past which give insight into one of the characters early lives, and also some from the point of view of one of Jody and Abe's neighbours. The voices are all distinct enough and the story pacy enough to stand all of these different perspectives. This kind of narrative could easily become disjointed and jarring but instead it flows seamlessly between them all and I felt as though it also helped to speed the story up at times. When it comes to the segments set in the past, while mostly not gratuitous, the implications of what is about to happen, or what has happened is clear enough to create a feeling of horror in the reader without having to ever spell it out. There is only one scene in which the reader is put in the heart of the action so to speak, and it is hard to read, but it is necessary in order for you to fully understand what it is that has happened and why.

I will admit that there was one point where I kind of wondered how the scene fit in with the rest of the book, what the significance was. As I read on I became so embroiled in the story of Mags, Jody and Abe that I almost forgot it had happened at all, so much so that when it was brought back into focus later in the book I was stunned and left wondering how I had failed to put things together sooner. But then this is the beauty of this book. Nothing is ever quite as it seems and everybody has the capacity to surprise. There was one revelation which I saw coming from a mile off, but it did not change how I felt about the book. Although I had guessed that part, I had incorrectly inferred the implications of it and when the truth is finally revealed. Well. Wow.
The whole atmosphere of this book, the setting within the former church, the deprived location amongst boarded up shops, in neighbourhoods rife with young gangs and the oppressive chill of a dark winter, all add to the creeping feeling of the text. It is beautifully dark, even the lighting in the hallways of the church are set on timers, plunging the characters into the same darkness that the reader can feel building throughout the text. There are moments of lightness, of hope. They are few but they are enough to give a little lift when you feel the darkness may well consume everything.

There are so many unreliable characters in this book, so many secrets, I was left wondering who, if anyone, to trust. As a reader I felt outrage, sympathy, horror, repulsion and sadness. This is a psychological thriller with a twist and a very twisted heart. This book is what happens when two people from very broken beginnings are brought together. This story is what happens when fear eclipses the need for justice and fairness, when the strong and arrogant prey upon the weak. This is a book which deserves every bit of praise it is undoubtedly going to get.

A twisted and dark 5 stars.

Tattletale is one of those books that I keep hearing about, so I had great expectations when I began to read. I was not disappointed.

Mary Magdalene (Mags) is on a flight from the States to the UK when she meets Daniel. At another time in her life he would be exactly what she needs, but her reason for travelling to the UK is not a happy one.

Mags' brother Abraham (Abe) is in a coma having fallen several flights of stairs and she is listed as his next of kin and emergency contact despite not having seen him in years.

The local police believe that Abe was depressed and suicidal. Not so says his fiancée Jody, who believes he was pushed.

At first Mags is indifferent, she barely knows her brother anymore, he is a stranger to her. Why should she get to decide if he lives or dies?

Then she becomes suspicious, although some pretty bad things happened to them during their childhood, she cannot believe that Abe was depressed. As she moves into his flat ad converses with his neighbours, she learns that Abe has grown into a kind, sweet and gentle man.

But if that is so, then who would want him dead? Was it ‘just’ an accident, or is there something more sinister at play?

Jody is Mags' first suspect, as she begins to act suspiciously around her. Jody’s former social worker assures Mags that Jody is quite harmless and she wouldn’t hurt anyone, but Mags barely knows the girl, and doesn’t know what to believe.

As Mags begins to uncover her Brother’s private life piece by piece, it seems like everything she knew about him is bought into question. Did she really know Abe at all?

Tattletale is a very clever book with multiple layers. Just when you think you know its characters inside out you may find yourself surprised. I know it's still early, but this is sure to be one of 2017's best sellers.

Mags received a phone call that her brother is on life support and travels to be by his side where she mets his fiancée Jody for the first time and finds, as time goes by , Jodys story doesn't quite add up A good psychological thriller that keeps you guessing .
Thanks to netgalley and the publisher for my arc copy which I have chosen to review

Mags has to return to the UK to find out what happened to her brother Abe as he lies in a coma in a hospital bed.
She meets his fiancé Jody and feels something is amiss about Jody's account of events.
The story was fast paced and kept my interest to the end.

I did enjoy this book, but it wasn't a 'wow' book for me.
I found it fairly easy to read, with some of it being predictable. There was still plenty to keep me guessing though.

Tattle Tale by Sarah J Naughton Is a book I nearly gave up on as the first few chapters left me bewildered, the chapters moved between events and characters with no explanation but I persevered and once I had worked out who the characters were in relation to the story it made for a quick and enjoyable read. I'm not going to say much about the plot as I hate spoilers but Abe is lying in a coma and for his sister Mags and fiancée Jody the nightmare is just beginning, what follows is a twisted tale of two damaged women, lies, abuse, and mental health issues.

The two women have disturbing pasts which at times made for a difficult read, (some readers maybe upset by some of the content) although I felt some empathy for Mags and Jody they were difficult characters to like. Both have issues which are evident in their actions, and although they both have very different personalities I couldn't for the life of me find any endearing qualities in either of them. As the plot unfolds I did find myself wondering who was the more reliable narrator, as both women have issues and secrets they would prefer to keep hidden. I do love an unreliable narrator and the author uses this to good effect. The author expertly draws you into her character’s lives, creating tension and layers of suspense as she goes.

As Mag's investigates her brothers accident everyone comes under suspicion, as the plot progressed and Mag's unravels the truth from the lies, the reader gets a sense of unease and foreboding. I did find myself wondering where the plot was leading, there were a couple of surprises along the way, a couple of which I guessed. Although I wasn't prepared for the dark and disturbing turn it took, and although perhaps a little unbelievable it was a suitable and apt ending. If I'm honest Tattletale is a slow starter, but the authors builds on the intrigue and suspense making for an enjoyable read. I thought this was going to be a five star read but unfortunately it didn't quite meet the mark, because Tattletale is told in short sharp chapters that cut from past to present and character to character, it didn't read as fluidly as I would have liked. I'm sure there will be plenty of readers who will love this taut psychological thriller, for me it was a throughly enjoyable read but not one I loved.
4 ⭐⭐⭐⭐out of 5
This review maybe altered slightly and edited prior to publication on my blog at http://thebookreviewcafe.com

Nice read and easy to follow story line. Look forward to reading more from this author