Books Read: Who Did You Tell? by Lesley Kara

It’s been 192 days, seven hours and fifteen minutes since her last drink. Now Astrid is trying to turn her life around.

Having reluctantly moved back in with her mother, in a quiet seaside town away from the temptations and painful memories of her life before, Astrid is focusing on her recovery. She's going to meetings. Confessing her misdeeds. Making amends to those she's wronged.

But someone knows exactly what Astrid is running from. And they won't stop until she learns that some mistakes can't be corrected.

Some mistakes, you have to pay for . . .

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I'd like to thank Anne Cater from Random Things Tours for inviting me to be a part of this blog tour and Transworld for my copy of Who Did You Tell? to review via NetGalley.

Lesley Kara's second novel Who Did You Tell? features Astrid, a recovering addict, who has been given a last chance at a fresh start by her mother. Astrid knows that she has put her family through hell over the years and following recent events, which are unknown to the reader at the start, she's finally at the stage where she wants to battle her demons once and for all and get totally sober. But it seems that someone else has other sinister plans in store for her and she feels like her life is unravelling once again but she's determined not to fall apart this time... only time will tell whether she can truly trust those around her.

It was clear from the start that Astrid was trying really hard at getting clean, she has moved away from London to cut herself off from temptation, but with no job to occupy her time and her mother watching her every move, it's hard to totally feel free and ignore the flashbacks that haunt her.  The more we learn of her past, the more we can see that she really is trying to follow the steps to recovery and make amends for her past mistakes but it's not easy when there are things that she'd rather forget.

Fortunately alcoholism, or even addiction for that matter, is not a topic that has affected me personally so I don't have any experience as to how it affects an individual and those closest to them, family, friends or colleagues, or how hard the recovery process is for all involved. But this topic was handled with sensitivity by the author to give the reader more of an informative understanding of how it affects behaviour etc. Grief is another subject that is tackled in this novel, in fact several characters are dealing with their own experiences of the death of a loved one, and the pain and guilt that they were feeling... you'll have to read the book to find out why the latter.

With its sensitive topics of addiction, grief, regret, obsession and revenge, Who Did You Tell? was the perfect read as it lulled me in slowly until I reached the stage where I simply couldn't put my Kindle down as I wanted to know more. I was wanting answers to the questions that kept popping up in my head, and constantly second guessing as to who the mystery person was that was taunting Astrid with reminders from the past and their reasoning for doing so, but at the same time I was wanting Astrid to stay strong and resist temptation and beat her addiction once for all.

A compelling read from start to finish so I really should go back and read Lesley's debut The Rumour that I bought last year but never got around to reading.

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