You Sent Me a Letter: A fast paced, gripping psychological thriller

by Lucy Dawson

At 2 a.m. on the morning of her fortieth birthday, Sophie wakes to find an intruder in her bedroom. The stranger hands Sophie a letter and issues an threat: open the letter at her party that evening, in front of family and friends, at exactly 8 p.m., or those she loves will be in grave danger.

What can the letter possibly contain?

This will be no ordinary party; Sophie is not the only person keeping a secret about the evening ahead. When the clock strikes eight, the course of several people's lives will be altered for ever.

• ISBN10: 1782396225
• ISBN13: 9781782396222
• Publish Date: 3 March 2016
• Publish Status: Active
• Out of Print: 18 November 2024
• Publish Country: GB
• Publisher: Atlantic Books
• Imprint: Corvus
• Edition: Main
• Format: Paperback
• Pages: 272
• Language: English

Reviews

[Leah]

Lucy Dawson has always erred on the side of darker fiction, and her new novel You Sent Me A Letter is no exception. It's extremely dark, with a twisty plot, and you're never quite sure who to trust, or who gave Sophie that letter to read out at 8pm, on her birthday, although after a certain revelation, I nailed my colours to the mast, and as it turned out I was right. GO ME. I am the best at guessing who did it, and I was right again.

I've been a fan of Lucy's ever since her debut novel His Other Lover, and followed that with What My Best Friend Did and The One That Got Away. The only one of her books I haven't read is Little Sister, but I've got it on my bookshelf. You Sent Me A Letter is yet another short, quick read from Lucy, which I like as it keeps the tension going, and it's like reading a book while you're on speed, I was flipping the pages that quickly, because I could literally feel Sophie's panic, as she tried to figure out just what the hell was going on, and what revelations lay in that letter.

I do, however, wonder why Sophie didn't just read the letter straight away. That genuinely baffled me, but I suppose if a fella breaks into your house, delivers you a letter, and threatens your nearest and dearest, you just do what he wants, which was for it to be read at 8pm, but the curiosity would have genuinely killed me. I could feel the tension dripping off the pages, and I kept getting so frustrated as Sophie's day turned out to be the longest day in history, or so it seemed, as 8pm took forever to come around!

I genuinely didn't like this book, it's SO hard to enjoy a book when all you feel is tension, and I felt tension to the maximum while reading. I understood Sophie was harassed, but the way she kept snapping at her loved ones, and her weird behaviour, I couldn't understand why she wasn't carted away by the men in white coats, she literally acted so strangely. It most definitely was one of those edge-of-your-seat reads. I couldn't possibly put it down, because I wanted to know what the heck was going on. You Sent Me A Letter was a pulse-pounding read, a roller-coaster of a read and even though I knew who the culprit was, and even though Sophie did some terrible things, it was still a terrible way to get revenge, but it was so, so engrossing.