And So It Begins by Rachel Abbott

And So It Begins
By Rachel Abbott
Published by Wildfire Books (15 November 2018)
I received an Advance Reader Copy from the publisher

Publisher's description

Cleo knows she should be happy for her brother Mark. He's managed to find someone new after the sudden death of his first wife - but something about Evie just doesn't feel right...

When Evie starts having accidents at home, her friends grow concerned. Could Mark be causing her injuries? Called out to their cliff-top house one night, Sergeant Stephanie King finds two bodies entangled on blood-drenched sheets.

Where does murder begin? When the knife is raised to strike, or before, at the first thought of violence? As the accused stands trial, the jury is forced to consider - is there ever a proper defence for murder?

My verdict
And So It Begins is yet another highly unpredictable psychological thriller from Rachel Abbott.

I raced through this, all the way to the shocker of an ending, my head swirling from all of the twists and turns. The chapters are fairly short, which encouraged me to keep reading into the early hours.

The plot focuses on a murder at the home of photographer Marcus North, the events leading up to that time and the investigation afterwards. Rachel Abbott consistently creates evocative settings and believable, multi-layered plots. She also manages to get right inside her characters' minds. I had no idea which characters were telling the truth and who could be trusted - a lesson in 'don't believe everything you're told'.

Each Rachel Abbott book is very different (in this one, the theme is revenge, but also sibling relationships), yet all are of the same high quality. I love her Tom Douglas series, but believe this may be her best yet and I'm hoping this may be the start of a new series featuring Sergeant Stephanie King and DCI Gus Brodie.