Publisher: Hodder
Release: 10th April 2014
Genre: YA, Thriller
Source: Received from the publisher in exchange for an honest review
Synopsis:
"What if you had the chance to start again...but only if you promised never to look back? Samantha is popular, rich, and seemed to have it all...until the night she and her best 'frenemy' Cassie disappeared and only Sammy resurfaced, with no recollection of who she is or what happened. Sammy's a stranger in her own life - a life she no longer wants any part of. Losing her memory is a chance to start again. Then Sammy begins receiving mysterious notes warning her about that night, urging her to not look back. But she can't let it go. As she starts poking around in her past she begins to remember...and something sinister begins to surface."
Review
Don’t Look Back was one of those books where I absolutely loved the first half of the book and was sure I was on to a winner only to be left a little disappointed by the ending. I can’t explain how addicted to this book I was for the first two hundred odd pages. I stayed up way too late tearing through the chapters without knowing where the time had gone.
Samantha has no memories of her life before she was found by the police whatsoever and that made her and the people around her unreliable characters. You’re never sure who to trust, who is lying, and who isn’t telling the whole truth about their history with Samantha. I think I suspected everybody at some point during the book! Jennifer includes plenty of red herrings which definitely help develop the characters as you go along and kept me on my toes. There’s one character who I was praying throughout would not turn out to be involved with Samantha’s disappearance and that was Carson Sam’s love interest who I completely fell in love with too. The romance in this book was fantastic and I also really enjoyed the relationships Sam had with her brother and his girlfriend who I also really liked.
I was really enjoying this book until I was just over half way through and suddenly all of the clues came together and I guessed both the killer and their motive. I felt at this point that Armentrout gave a little too much away; the clues are definitely there to find if you pay attention to them! Knowing the who and the why half way through kind of spoiled my enjoyment of the rest of the book – you want to be kept in suspense throughout with a thriller! I also found the whole unveiling at the end really rushed. The Epilogue didn’t feel like it fit in with the tone of the rest of the book and I was still left with some questions. After such a fantastic start I’m sad to say I closed the book feeling disappointed.
Overall Don’t Look Back was definitely a read I had mixed feelings over. If you don’t guess the ending I think you’ll really enjoy this but the fact that I did really affected my experience with this book which was a real shame.
