Although I’m trying not to take on blog tours this year, I was extremely disappointed when Rachel Kennedy at Penguin Random House invited me to participate in the tour for Come Back For Me by Heidi Perks as sadly I will be away when the tour runs and am unable to participate. I thought Heidi Perks’ previous book, Now You See Her was brilliant and would gladly have broken my self-imposed tour ban for this new book.

However, having blogged about Now You See Here here, I am delighted to have a pre-tour review of Heidi’s Come Back For Me today. My enormous thanks to Rachel for sending me a copy of Come Back For Me in return for an honest review.

Come Back For Me will be published by Penguin Random House imprint Century on 11th July 2019 and is available for pre-order here.

Come Back For Me

A SHOCKING DISCOVERY.
A COMMUNITY WRAPPED IN SECRETS.

A tiny island community is stunned by the discovery of a long-buried body.

For Stella Harvey the news is doubly shocking. The body has been found in the garden of her childhood home – the home her family fled without explanation twenty-five years ago.

Now, questioning her past and desperate to unearth the truth, Stella returns to the isolated island. But she quickly finds that the community she left isn’t as welcoming as she remembers – and that people in it will go to any length to protect their secrets.

One thing rings true…
You can’t bury the truth forever. 

My Review of Come Back For Me

Uncovering a body leads to many secrets being exposed.

Oh yes! I approached Come Back For Me with high expectations as I thought Heidi Perks’ Now You See Her was excellent and in Come Back For Me she has exceeded every one of those expectations. I genuinely could not stop reading. Each chapter ended with such a thrilling teaser, revelation or cliff hanger that I simply HAD to know what happened next so that I devoured this book, putting my life on hold until I’d relished every word.

Heidi Perks is the ultimate expert when it comes to plotting. I knew exactly whose body was buried on the island and who had put it there. Except, of course, I didn’t! And every time I reassessed and came up with another theory, the author wrong footed me again.  I loved being drip fed information at the same time as Stella, as well as receiving veiled truths and details from Stella herself, because this fabulous story telling made me think, at the same time as entertaining me brilliantly. I thought the entire storytelling was just wonderful.

Initially I was unsure why Stella is a consellor, but the more I read the more I realised how crucial her profession is to the overall success of Come Back For Me. I didn’t always agree with some of her actions and decisions, but I was always firmly on her side because Hedi Perks made her real, flawed and believable. Her whole family is a tangle of deception and assumption that swirls below the surface making for an intriguing and exciting narrative. Come Back For Me made me wonder how much we really do know those closest to us. I found the balance of characters perfectly handled so that my attention kept shifting between then, making me as complicit in the events as any of them in the book happen to be.

With events racing along at a breathtaking speed and a perfect balance of the two time frames, it was only afterwards when I had finished reading that the more subtle and sociological themes truly hit home. To explain more would be to spoil the story, but Heidi Perks drops in detail that is shocking and yet simultaneously acceptable so that she left me wondering just what construes a morally acceptable decision. I loved this thought-provoking aspect of Come Back For Me.

I enjoyed every moment reading Come Back For Me. I thought it was a perfectly executed thriller with more layers the more I thought about it. Heidi Perks entertained me completely, absorbing my attention unwaveringly and I think Come Back For Me deserves to be a huge success because it’s a cracking read.

About Heidi Perks

Heidi Perks was born in 1973. She lives by the sea in Bournemouth with her husband and two children.

Heidi graduated from Bournemouth University in 1997 with a BA (Hons) in Retail Management, and then enjoyed a career in Marketing before leaving in 2012 to focus on both bringing up her family and writing.

Heidi successfully applied for a place on the inaugural Curtis Brown Creative online Novel Writing Course and after that dedicated her time to completing her first novel, Beneath The Surface.

She has a huge interest in what makes people tick and loves to write about family relationships, especially where some of the characters are slightly dysfunctional.

You can follow Heidi on Twitter @HeidiPerksBooks and find her on Facebook.