As a child, it was just a game. As an adult, it was a living nightmare.
'This time it's different. She's gone too far now.
She really has.'
When teenage friends Lizzie and Alice decide to head off for a walk in the countryside, they are blissfully unaware that this will be their final day together - and that only Lizzie will come back alive.
Lizzie has no memory of what happened in the moments before Alice died, she only knows that it must have been a tragic accident. But as she tries to cope with her grief, she is shocked to find herself alienated from Alice's friends and relatives. They are convinced she somehow had a part to play in her friend's death.
Twelve years later, unpacking boxes in the new home she shares with her fiancé, Lizzie is horrified to find long-buried memories suddenly surfacing. Is the trauma of the accident finally catching up with her, or could someone be trying to threaten her new-found happiness?
Twelve years is a long time to wait, when you're planning the perfect revenge . . .
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 The Dare to review via NetGalley.
Having previously enjoyed Who Did You Tell? I couldn't wait to get stuck into Lesley Kara's latest novel The Dare as the blurb alone sounded intriguing. Alice and Lizzie were best friends until the day of the tragic accident that saw Alice killed and left Lizzie traumatised especially when her innocence is questioned.
The Dare is told through a dual timeline, alternating between Then and Now. The past sections are set in 2007 when Lizzie and Alice were 13 and gives us an insight into their friendship and how everything that happened on that fateful day and the days and months afterwards have deeply affected Lizzie. Fast forward 12 years and Lizzie is now in her mid-twenties and appears to have got her life back on track as she's now engaged and living with her fiance Ross in London. Although scratch beneath the surface and you'll see that things are not quite as they seem as she is in fact living a very solitary and isolated lifestyle despite living in the bustling city of London. She doesn't appear to have any real friends in her life and the only other people initially in her life seem to be her parents who moved to the seaside town of Dovercourt which is a place I am very familiar with as used to spend my childhood summer holidays there staying with my great aunt in her seafront B&B.
I really didn't know what to make of Lizzie at first, I could totally emphasise with the emotional trauma that she would have had to come to terms with although I was also frustrated with her at the same time as it seemed like that despite seeing a therapist, she never really dealt with her feelings and emotions. Instead everything was shut away and hidden but as we all know, secrets can only stay hidden for so long before they come to the surface and you have to deal with everything out in the open again.
It's only when Lizzie makes a few discoveries and someone from her past makes an unexpected reappearance that you realise that she is a lot stronger than you think. She finally starts to question everything she thought she knew even when you think she's welcomed them into her life with open arms. At the same time I was also intrigued as to why that certain person was looking for revenge now, have they really been holding on to the grudge that long especially as they were all children at the time of the accident.
Although I initially found the first two-thirds of the book a little slow going, the pace certainly ramped up towards the end and I found myself constantly wondering just what was going to be revealed next! The Dare is ultimately a tale of secrets, lies and betrayal and well worth a read. Now I just need to find a few spare hours to go back and read her debut novel The Rumour that I bought when it was first published but I still haven't read.
Thanks for the blog tour support Sharon x
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