Every Wednesday, like clockwork, the terror returns.
It seems like an ordinary Wednesday, until the phone rings. A mysterious caller with a chilling threat. Journalist Alice Henderson hangs up, ready to dismiss it as a hoax against the newspaper. But the next Wednesday, the stalker makes another move—and it becomes clear that this is all about Alice.
Someone wants her to suffer, but for what? … suffer, but for what? Her articles have made her a popular local champion—could it be her past rather than her work that’s put her life in danger? Alice is determined not to give in to fear, but with the police investigation at a dead end, her boyfriend insists on hiring private investigator Matthew Hill.
With every passing Wednesday the warnings escalate, until it’s not only Alice but also her family in the stalker’s sights. As her tormentor closes in, can Alice uncover what she’s being punished for before the terrifying threats become an unthinkable reality?
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I received this from Netgalley. All opinions and thoughts are my own.
I had seen good reviews on this book, but I didn’t really care for it. It had an interesting premise. Plus the story was well-written. So what was the problem? It seems to me that almost all authors are having Multiple POV’s in their books, which isn’t bad. It just seems that they are all writing this most predictably books now. This was no different. She gives you a couple of red herrings and then wham, predictable ending. I love a book that keeps me guessing and surprises me at the end. This one not so much.
4.25 STARS
Boasting an intriguing premise with multi-dimensional characters and plenty of suspense, “I Will Make You Pay” is a psychological thriller about a journalist—Alice Henderson–who suddenly finds herself the victim of a terrorizing stalker.
Alternating between past and present, the story unfolds slowly, peeling away the layers to the back story that is somehow tied to the threats that Alice receives every Wednesday, without fail. Tender moments between Alice and her ailing mother are interspersed throughout the book, helping to balance the scales of between good and evil. And despite having figured out the puzzle before the final piece had fallen into place, “I Will Make You Pay” had me enthralled from start to finish
I enjoyed this book – it took me a bit to get into it but soon I was fully immersed in the story of Alice, a journalist and the main character who is being threatened – but only on Wednesdays. Why is this unknown person targeting her and why on Wednesdays only? That’s the key to this mystery. It’s told in alternating narratives of Alice, the PI, Matthew, who has been hired to protect her, and the harasser himself starting way back when he was a child. We find out pretty early on what causes the stalker to become like he is and the reader can’t help but feel some sympathy. We also discover that Alice has some dark secrets from her past that she has kept from everyone, even her current boyfriend, Tom. Could her secrets explain why she is being threatened now? Or is it simply because of one of her news stories has hit a sore spot for someone?
There’s also a sweet side story involving Matthew and an older man who keeps trying to hire him, but Matthew doesn’t want to take advantage of the man’s claims of ‘little people’ that are trying to capture him and take him away. Matthew’s generosity and good-hearted nature are evident in their brief interactions. Another side story involving Alice and a blogger felt a little more forced and I wasn’t sure that it added anything to the plot.
It’s a generally fast paced story with a fun twist at the end. A slightly far-fetched twist, though, that I found insulting to Alice’s intelligence. But it does make for good reading!
I Will Make You Pay is more drama than thriller, although the chapters from Him do get creepy at times. That said, I became more emotionally invested in what we can only assume is our stalker as we learn about his childhood and the reasons behind his hatred of Wednesday’s as well as his determination to make Alice pay. As far as puzzling out the identity of the stalker, that’s entirely too easy despite a couple of decent red herrings. In fact, I was really hoping for it to be one of the red herrings so the whole thing wouldn’t be so glaringly obvious. As with any story of this type, we have to have the required investigator presence, and this one gives us two. The problem is that for the life of me, I can’t figure out the purpose in either Matthew Hill or Melanie Sanders. They don’t actually solve anything and are just so much filler as far as I could tell. Sadly, this could’ve been a solid thriller, it certainly had the potential, it just didn’t quite get there.
Whoa! Hang on to your seats for this mystery psychological thriller. The main character Alice, who is a journalist, is being stalked! She only hears from him on Wednesdays. Is she being stalked because of her job as a journalist or something in her private life. The story alternates being told by present day Alice and the past about a little boy….. Her husband hires a private investigator to watch over Alice and to find the stalker. There are lots of twists and a few wrong turns. I enjoyed this book! Thank you NetGalley and Thomas and Mercer for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.
3.5 Stars
This is my 2nd book by this author and I am a fan. This one, while not as good as I Am Watching You, is rather good. I was suspicious of a few people but never really guessed the culprit. It did drag in some places which is the reason for just the 3.5 stars. I would definitely read more by Teresa though.
Thank you to netgalley and the publisher for my copy.
I Will Make You Pay by Teresa Driscoll was an interesting read. Suspenseful and gripping, the story will captivate you from start to finish. Who is Alice and why is she getting threats? The first time it happened, on a Wednesday, she thought it was a hoax, but as they continue to escalate, she begins to be afraid. Why is this happening? Enter private investigator Mathew Hill. As the threats continue to escalate, we see the story unfold both in past and present. Who is doing this to her and how will it all end? A thrilling and suspenseful read!
Happy reading!
An excellent thriller with drama and mystery that pulls you in with an underlying suspense and fear of what will happen next.
Some individuals are afraid of “things” but Alice is afraid of “Wednesday’s”. She is a journalist and one Wednesday she answers an incoming line of the paper and is threatened to be harmed.
Figuring it was just a crank call she refuses to be bothered by it, even though it seemed to be personally directed to her. When the next Wednesday comes and she receives a “gift” at the paper, she finally believes that she is being stalked.
As each Wednesday arrives her stalker seems to be escalating and her fear becomes more evident. There are plenty of misdirections and suspects to keep you guessing until the unexpected is revealed. Thank you Netgalley and Bookoture for an early copy. I voluntarily read this ARC and the above review and comments are my honest opinion
I received a free electronic copy of this British psychological thriller on September 8, 2019, from Netgalley, Teresa Driscoll, and Amazon Publishing UK. Thank you all for sharing your hard work with me. I have read this novel of my own volition, and this review reflects my honest personal opinion of this work. This is a book I am pleased to refer to friends and family. If thrillers are your game, Teresa Driscoll is for you, too.
We see this novel unfold from the viewpoints of Alice Henderson, a journalist from the present; “Him”, whom we visit from early childhood to full adulthood as he pops back and forth through time; and Matthew Hill, mid-thirties, a former cop, now a private investigator with a wife and a daughter two years old.
We have a mess of other distractions. Jack Trenter is a widower, a co-worker whom Alice invited to dinner several months ago and made an embarrassing overture, which was not reciprocated. Alice is secretive about her past and vulnerable where her family is concerned. Well, she thought she was secretive – except for her occasional personal column in the paper. Her sister Leanne is a wealthy Londoner with children, and their mother is in assisted living in the life-ending stages of COPD. The threats against them carry directly back to some of Alice’s personal columns.
Alice is considered an up-and-coming journalist by her peers. She has covered, from its inception, the necessity for a tear-down of low-income housing in South Devon, with the temporary relocation of all the residents until they can be permanently installed in new housing to be built in the same location. No one can see a connection between her work and her stalker. There was really no opposition to the modern, additional housing needed for South Devon. She is interested in but not fully committed to boyfriend Tom Stellar. It is a fairly new relationship.
“Him” is a very damaged, unhappy adult, as he was as a child. Raised by his only living relative, his elderly granny, he was bright, but never learned to fit in with others, and with the recent death of his granny, he is lost.
By the second Wednesday’s catastrophe, it begins to occur to Alice that someone really is out to get her. Or wait – this would be the third Wednesday in a row she was threatened. She didn’t recognize the first episode except in retrospect. Though the police are now involved, there is no pattern to the threats other than their arrival on Wednesday. Alice is fairly sure that even were she to reveal her own personal secret, it couldn’t help the police find her stalker. Wednesday becomes an impossible day for her to get through. Every week the damage escalates and Alice finds herself closed in, not able to work because it could jeopardize her co-workers, finding herself in constant fear for herself and her family, in daily contact with the police and Matthew, the PI Tom hired to shadow her on Wednesdays, and of course more and more dependent on Tom.
Then secrets begin to surface. Who is Jennifer Wallace? Why does Alice keep running into Jack? What – if anything – does the Maple Hill House Complex have to do with Alice’s Wednesday terrorist? Who is “Him”?
Being stalked has to be really scary. Not to know who you can trust or what is going to happen next has to be the worst feeling. In this story Alice knows that Wednesday is the day to be extra observant and to expect nothing good. I wasn’t sure who would turn out to be the stalker. Sure, I had my suspicions but in the end it was someone entirely else and the motive was something I didn’t see coming.
Journalist Alice Henderson is being stalked. Hang up calls. Telephone threats. Someone was in her house. Someone has videotaped her mother who is in the nursing home. Who is terrorizing her? At first she thinks it’s just a hoax.. a prank … but then things turn deadly.
Her boss wants her to take time off until this is resolved. Her co-worker, Jack, takes to following her around himself. Her boyfriend, Tom, hires Matthew Hill, a private investigator, to follow her only on Wednesdays … which is the only day of the week that these freaky things happen.
Matthew is working closely with the police, and all become really concerned when they discover that Alice isn’t really Alice. Who is she really? Who .. or what .. is she hiding from? And why on Wednesdays?
This is a suspenseful nail biter from the very first to the very end. The characters are finely drawn, credible. The book is told by two people .. .one, of course, is Alice. The other is from the stalker, telling his life story from a young age through today. The ending is explosive!
Many thanks to the author / Amazon Publishing UK / Netgalley for the digital copy of this Psychological – Crime Fiction. Read and reviewed voluntarily, opinions expressed here are unbiased and entirely my own.
Well didn’t see that coming. Though there were several times I thought I knew who the stalker was. I even remembered that something was mentioned earlier but I couldn’t remember who it was connected too. I liked how the book went from three different points of views. You do feel bad for the stalker but not enough to think he should be stalking Alice. There are many secrets to learn through this book. Alice is at the center of most of them. If you like a good stalker book, you will like this one.
*I received a free copy of this book via NetGalley and am voluntarily leaving a review.*
This was such a great stalker thriller that kept me on the edge of my seat until the very end. Alice is a reporter who starts getting stalker type phone calls on Wednesdays. Her boyfriend, Tom, hires Matthew, a former police officer now private detective, to help keep an eye on Alice on Wednesdays. There are lots of very interesting things going on in this story that keeps things moving right along. I did feel that Matthew’s 2-year-old daughter had a far too advanced vocabulary. If you are looking for a great stalker thriller, this is it. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC of this fantastic thriller in exchange for an honest review.
You will be absolutely shocked at who the bad guy is. This author does an excellent job of throwing you off the trail. Alice is receiving threatening messages only on Wednesdays. By the time she realizes what is happening things have escalated. Her boyfriend Tom, hires a private investigator Matthew to try and find out who is after her. They are led around on a wild goose chase while Alice and her family are terrified the story is full of suspense, twists and turns as you are taken on a thrilling ride to discover who the stalkier is. It is a page turning event to the very end. Brilliantly written!
Everyone is suspect in this story. The author kept me on edge and desperate to know who was behind the stalking. The end was a twist I never considered. Well done.
A very good story. This book is about a journalist called Alice who is having problems with astalker. Every Wednesday something else happens and things become more intense as the story go along. the who and Why keeps you guessing all the way to the end. It is a fast read that keeps your attention from start to finish with plenty of twists to make it very interesting. Loved it.
I received this ARC from NetGalley and the publisher in exchange for my fair and honest review.
This was the first book I had read by Teresa Driscoll, having said that I wasn’t really sure what to expect. From the blurb of the book it appearred that is would be a good book. Thrillers are normally one of my favorite genres, but having said that I found this book to be pretty slow moving as far as thrillers go. The book seemed to jump from place to place which didnt really work for me, I will say that I was surprised by the outcome and whom the stalker turned out to be. Some may enjoy this book, it just didn’t pull me into the storyline like I like for books to do.
I stayed up late last night reading this. I really enjoyed the way this book unfolded, switching points of view and periods of time to reveal the bad guy piece by piece, and show things from all angles. I really didn’t start to figure this out until nearly the end.
Alice is being stalked, and everyone is a suspect. I actually really relate to this, and almost couldn’t read this book, as I’m dealing with harrassment myself from someone I don’t know. Anyways, it upped the suspense for me. I was totally into the story- she kept my interest in every page, with lots of seemingly unrelated details, and multiple characters with questionable intentions. I was still surprised with how it unravelled.
Wow I will never think of Wednesdays in the same way after reading this book. I really enjoyed the way Teresa Driscoll layed out the story. You are given a piece of the puzzle but not in the order they need to be in. So as you read the book you will see each major player have a chapter and you get a glimpse of what the ending will be. I was gifted this kindle book from Netgalley with the understanding that I would leave an honest review.
This book is well written but it was not a fast-paced thriller in any regard. The initial threating phone call from the stalker was not frightening to me so I had trouble building fear from it. It was odd and with a voice changer it may be a bit creepy, but the threat itself… was not scary. I think the only thing that was a bit eerie was just the idea that one day of the week would be a day of dread since the stalker only focused his stalking on Wednesdays.
This story is broken into short scenes from the POV of the victim, Alice, the investigator, Matthew, and Him, who we assume is the stalker. Honestly, the best character in the book I felt the most emotion for was the stalker. To the point that I wanted to follow the poor boy’s journey to revenge for his abuses. It was much more intriguing and he was so vulnerable and raw.
I stuck with this one because I was hoping the connection between Alice and her stalker would be clever or unexpected but I dreaded that I knew the twist very early. It was too obvious. Still, I won’t say I didn’t enjoy the book at all. It was a fast read in the sense that chapters flowed swiftly but I found that I could not understand why the book spent so much time with the private investigator character Matthew and his two-year-old getting ready for work. It had nothing to do with the plot but I kept thinking for some reason it did. I kept wondering what was going to happen to that man’s little girl and how did it connect? It didn’t. And that was odd. Eventually, that made me feel like these separate POVs were telling different stories. I didn’t really care about his domestic chores by the time I realized it had zero to do with the plot.
As for the main character, Alice, I did like her character and the professional and private world she was encased in. Overall this is not a thriller. It’s a commentary on stalking, which is a valid and serious subject. I think the scenes written about Matthew’s fatherhood struggles were endearing but useless and really just one of those scenes would have set the character up. He didn’t need to overcome the terrible twos while hunting a stalker. BTW, it is also nice when a detective or investigator actually solves some part of the mystery during the book and I kept waiting for Matthew who we are to believe is smart to connect something. He never really did other than to have a slight tiny hunch their suspect wasn’ the guy. I like when the competence of a character is prooven in clues and evidence.