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The Lucky One by Jessica Payne

Stacey Irving • December 6, 2022

Best read of the year

I just finished reading The Lucky one by Jessica Payne and here is my review.

Leaving the prom early was the biggest mistake they could ever have made. Norah was lucky to have escaped the serial killer with her life, her best friend August, wasn’t so lucky.
Everyone calls her the lucky one for surviving but Norah feels anything but lucky. Never having caught the person who killed her best friend and was named Hansel by the tabloids, Norah spends her life in MMA as a measure of control and releasing the victim mantra she doesn’t want to possess. 
Having to return to her hometown after the passing of her father, Norah is thrown back into a world she never wanted to come back to. Everyone wants to know how she escaped a serial killer. Then the messages start and she realizes that Hansel has spent the last 10 years waiting for her to come home. Who can she trust where she can barely trust herself?
This is my second read by this author so my expectations were through the roof…. This book nailed it all!! Loved it. Loved every single second of the build up of brilliance. Getting a glimpse into the kind of serial killer that doesn’t quite fit the mold was illuminating!
This book is set between two times, 10 years in the past and present day and that worked really well for giving us more to Norah’s story. While Norah is a reliable narrator in my opinion, I always felt like we never really knew what was going on and the twists just didn’t stop coming! I had no idea who it was… At all and I believe I blamed every single person close to her at least twice! I was foiled though! I bow down to greatness. The character development was on point and the whole atmosphere of the book had a slightly menacing feel to it and I always felt a little rattled for Norah. The unease was so tangible it was like I was living through it with her. My heart rate took a while to come down, that's for sure. 
5 stars. I read a lot of thrillers so my expectations are always high but this one nailed it. 
If you love feeling that little bead of terror running down your spine when you read, then you need to get this one ASAP!!
Thank you to @jessicapayneauthor for another nail biter, and to #netgalley and #bookouture for my review copy 


By Stacey Irving March 5, 2025
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By Stacey Irving March 2, 2025
I just finished The Business Trip by Jessie Garcia and here are my musings. What do two women who have never met have in common? They both took the same flight, they both vanished and it all seems to be connected to a man called Trent McCarthy…. This was clever, really clever. The narration was amazing and I love how well it was done. There was a lot of POV set into different parts and I think it all held together really well. I did find that all the twists and turns got to be a bit much. I don’t think it needed so much. Sometimes, less is more and I think it could have been scaled back a bit and it would have blown me away. I wasn’t a fan of the ending. It felt really meh and lacked lustre. Pancake like… not a waffle… it fell too flat. I was waiting for this beautiful crescendo of chills and it missed the mark. It was a real shame because the rest of the book was really well done. It felt ludicrous, truly not what I was hoping for. It definitely made my pulse thrum and that’s enough from a thriller for me. I definitely want to read more from this author because if this is her debut novel and she came out the starter gate swinging… She is definitely one to watch. 3.75 stars Thank you @macmillionaudio and @netgalley for my gifted copy
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By Stacey Irving February 19, 2025
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By Stacey Irving February 9, 2025
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