FIRST BORN WILL DEAN *****
YOU CAN READ MY REVIEW FOR WILL DEAN'S PREVIOUS BOOK 'THE LAST THING TO BURN' HERE
THE LAST THING A TWIN EXPECTS IS TO BE ALONE ...
Molly lives a quiet, contained life in London. Naturally risk averse, she gains comfort from security and structure. Every day the same.
Her identical twin Katie is her exact opposite: gregarious and spontaneous. They used to be inseparable, until Katie moved to New York a year ago. Molly still speaks to her daily without fail.
But when Molly learns that Katie has died suddenly in New York, she is thrown into unfamiliar territory. Katie is part of her DNA. As terrifying as it is, she must go there and find out what happened. As she tracks her twin's last movements, cracks begin to emerge. Nothing is what it seems. And a web of deceit is closing around her.
Delivering the same intensity of pace and storytelling that made THE LAST THING TO BURN a word-of-mouth sensation, FIRST BORN will surprise, shock and enthral.
MY REVIEW
*****
I didn’t envy Will Dean writing First Born this year. His last book The Last Thing to Burn became such a success last year (including making my top list of books in 2021), that expectations are at an all time high. As the last book was very much a standalone, this adds pressure of stepping out of his comfort zone with something completely different but still delivering a great book.
I needn’t have worried – Will Dean has absolutely done it again and First Born is another standout hit for this reader! In First Born we meet Molly Raven, who has spent all of her life in her twin sister’s shadow. While the daring and charismatic Katie is living her life in New York, Molly has stayed in England, struggling with day to day anxieties and disaster scenarios which plague her thoughts. However, when her sister is found murdered, she makes the trip across the pond to help investigate what has happened.
There seems to be a trend at the moment for socially awkward main characters that we can all relate to (think The Maid or Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine). This works really well here as Molly ponders through all of the worst-case scenarios of what could happen to her on a day to day basis. Although this is unusual, some of the quirks she had, particularly in regard to airport etiquette I completely empathised and related to and so I found her to be a really compelling main character. The book starts very much as a standard crime thriller but then there are two sensational twists that I did not see coming which shake up the plot and left me racing through the pages to find out what would happen next.
I won’t discuss the plot in any more detail for fear of giving anything away, but I really do recommend you read this book to find out more. My only criticism would be that as the twist is so great, it does throw up some plot-holes and questions about certain characters if you look back on the rest of the book with hindsight. However, I think that fixing this would have given everything away too early!
Overall, Will Dean has produced another brilliant and twisty thriller and I can’t wait to read whatever he writes next! Thank you to NetGalley & Hodder & Stoughton for the chance to read the ARC in exchange for an honest review.
LINKS TO BUY Amazon UK