Killing Kate – Alex Lake #Bookreview

Published by Harper Collins

Ebook & Paperback : 6 October 2016

A serial killer is stalking your home town.

He has a type: all his victims look the same.

And they all look like you.

Kate returns from a post break-up holiday with her girlfriends to news of a serial killer in her home town – and his victims all look like her.

It could, of course, be a simple coincidence.

Or maybe not.

She becomes convinced she is being watched, followed even. Is she next? And could her mild-mannered ex-boyfriend really be a deranged murderer?

Or is the truth something far more sinister?

Kate Armstrong has just broken up with her long-time boyfriend Phil and, together with a couple of friends, goes away on a short break to Turkey. Her ex is not taking the split well and develops obsessive stalking tendencies, in the misguided idea that Kate will reconsider and they can get back together.

In the meantime, Kate realises that she has the freedom to enjoy her new single status and takes full advantage; that is, until she returns home and discovers that women who look just like her are being murdered.

Killing Kate is just the type of book I enjoy – it’s an extremely well written, fast paced, serial killer thriller and okay, it wasn’t difficult to work out quite early on who the killer was but this didn’t spoil my enjoyment at all and I just immersed myself in the story. I may have worked out the ‘who’ but certainly not the ‘why’ and this was where the story became more intense and twisted.

The main characters were very well developed and realistic. Part of me despised Phil for being so full of self pity and for virtually begging Kate to take him back – I wanted to shout at him to man up but at the same time, I couldn’t help but feel sympathy for him. They had been together for over 10 years and now suddenly his life had completely changed – he’d lost his home and his lover and was reduced to relying on a friend’s generosity for somewhere to live. Likewise I had a lot of time for Kate – she was sensible and goodhearted but despite this she made some rather dubious choices which you could just see would come back and bite her. Everyone has a back story and in this case, the separate strands between the present and five years earlier tie up very well to form a dramatic conclusion.

The dialogue, the descriptive writing, the short chapters – these all hooked me in straight away and even if the story did become perhaps a little incredulous towards the end, it was one of those reads that I didn’t want to put down. Definitely recommended if you like a twisty, tension filled story.

The name ‘Alex Lake’ is a pseudonym of a British novelist and this is the second book published under that name. I do have the author’s previous thriller (After Anna) on my shelf to read which I bought ages ago and haven’t got round to and after reading this I’m hoping to bump it up the TBR mountain. I am also very intrigued to know who the author really is – if anyone knows, please tell! (I won’t say anything, honest!)

At the time of posting this, Killing Kate can be downloaded from Amazon UK for just 99p

About the author:

Alex Lake is the pseudonym of a British novelist whose first book was one of Amazon UK’s top ten debuts of 2012. Alex was born in the North West of England in the 1970s and now lives in the North East of the US.

Author Links: Twitter | Amazon UK  | Goodreads