I also believe that I have a love/hate relationship with my thrillers. Was this a book that was super unique? No... but I was entertained for the most part. By the half-light of the hallway Catherine stood, naked, and stared down at her huge tummy – shiny and stretched to accommodate the baby they were looking forward to with such pleasure. It was a view she’d enjoyed many, many times over the past months – marvelling at her tightening swell and disappearing feet. She always felt joy and wonder. But tonight the joy didn’t come. And neither did the wonder. Her mother’s scratchy signature had been roughly crossed out and on the blank side of the card was scrawled a new message. . . 'I could have killed you.' DISCLOSURE: Thank you to Grove Atlantic via Netgalley for providing a digital ARC of Snap by Belinda Bauer for review. All opinions expressed in this review are entirely my own personal opinions.

What wife does that?? Every wife I know -including myself - would never keep a secret from my husband that a knife was found near my bed with a note saying.”I could have killed you”.Three years later, Catherine, a young pregnant woman, wakes to find a knife laying alongside her in her bedroom. A note scratched on torn paper states: "I could have killed you." Afraid to tell her husband who's on a business trip, Catherine refuses to devulge strange happenings in their home with break-ins. Someone is lurking outside and they've now been in. She won't even go to the police. Catherine has more than raging hormones to deal with. For context, McDermid founded the Harrogate Crime Writing Festival with Bauer’s agent, Jane Gregory, who is also her agent. Cosy. I’d be interested to hear from the other judges individually as to why they thought this book worthy of inclusion. If Snap is, as McDermid claims, “the best crime novel I’ve read in a very long time”, then it’s not literary fiction that’s in trouble. Bauer's judgement of tone is perfect throughout a captivating whodunnit that's often hilarious . . . beady-eyed yet tender, it resembles a collaboration between Agatha Christie and Muriel Spark.'

I really think it's tough for authors out there to come up with unique and interesting thrillers lately... I feel like they're all beginning to bleed into one another :(. Eileen’s almost complete absence from the novel accentuates her loss and her children’s need to a degree that makes their subsequent moods and attitudes completely understandable, and I loved the way the story gradually came together. Bauer simultaneously grips your heart and your head with a cast of characters you can’t help but care for and a crime you need to see solved. I hope I’ve interested you enough that you will run and get this book as soon as it’s published, it’s that good!

Snap decisions can be dangerous.

Another sweltering month in Charlotte, another boatload of mysteries past and present for overworked, overstressed forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan. MY THOUGHTS: Bauer has a way of sneaking up on you. She doesn't rely on twists and turns to keep the reader interested. She gets inside the heads and hearts of her characters to provide a rich, deep and often humorous viewpoint.