5* The Girl In Cell A by Vaseem Khan. One word - bravo. This is psychological fiction and/or crime literature at its finest. What a book!

Orianna was locked up for murder 18 years ago. We join her across 2 timelines, one in prison with a mental health professional trying to untangle Orriana’s guilt or innocence and in the other in the small town where the crime happened in an attempt to find the truth.

I am blown away by how good The Girl In Cell A is. I love Vaseem Khan’s Malabar House series and a standalone is a huge risk for an author and also a bit of a risk for the reader. However, Vaseem has taken his writing to new heights. The characters are drawn spectacularly. I was rooting for some but swung from loathing to liking and back again with others. The plot zips along but in the measured way of Tana French and Chris Whittaker. The twists keep on coming right until the end and the intrigue levels could not be higher. This is a book that is so well written that it is effortless to read (a real skill) and impossible to put down. I couldn’t recommend it more highly.

Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for an ARC.

The talented Vaseem Khan pivots effortlessly from historical to contemporary crime, and from the sub-continent to small-town America in this compelling, pacy, multi-layered mystery that shows us the most dangerous secrets are the ones we keep from ourselves.

Such a great twisty psych thriller. I've heard great things about Vaseem Khan's historical fiction but this is the first book of his I have read. Highly recommend this one!

This was the definition of ‘couldn’t put it down’. I read at the end that it took the khan 3 tears to write and I can see why- the research and hard work that went into making this work must have been immense! The characters were plausible, in particular, the voices of Annie and Orianna and the biases of the small town inhabitants were so believable they could make you sick with anger. There were times I thought I knew what was coming next and then everything flipped. Sometime the flip would frustrate me and then without warning it flipped again! This is a genre it’s common to do OK writing, but rarely have I been so amazed and captivated by such a plot, I am new to this author but impressed! (I also enjoyed the note about ‘author clothes’).

With many thanks to Netgalley for this free arc and I am leaving this unbiased review voluntarily.

WOW! That was some read! This is an outstanding piece of story telling. Beautifully written with an engaging cast of characters that almost pop into life from the pages. Tense, gripping and very clever Vaseem Khan has written a truly riveting read that will take you on journey which twists and turns as the plot unravels. Set in the then with Annie and the now with Orianna it will at times seem confusing but stick with it because the end is nigh on brilliant. Loved loved lived it!