Before You Die by Samantha Hayes

Oh God, please don’t let me die.

It has taken nearly two years for the Warwickshire village of Radcote to put a spate of teenage suicides behind it.

Then a young man is killed in a freak motorbike accident, and a suicide note is found among his belongings. A second homeless boy takes his own life, this time on the railway tracks.

Is history about to repeat itself?

DI Lorraine Fisher has just arrived for a relaxing summer break with her sister. Soon she finds herself caught up in the resulting police enquiry. And when her nephew disappears she knows she must act quickly.

Are the recent deaths suicide – or murder?

And is the nightmare beginning again?

So many other reviewers have been comparing this book to Until You're Mine but I haven't read Until You're Mine so I read this as a stand alone book and have nothing else to compare to.

I found that Before You Die pushes you in right at the deep end of the story and the plot instantly continues to twist, turn and unravel right up to the very last page.  There isn't any respite, as seemingly unconnected threads weave together until it dawns on you that they were always part of the same thread, you just hadn't realised the connection.

I have to say I generally really enjoyed it; I found myself rapidly turning the pages to follow the next knot in the thread that was threatening to be untangled.  I did not guess, or come anywhere close to guessing, how the connections would all link up or who had been involved in which element of the story.

However, ultimately, I personally found there to be a couple of loose ends that were left unresolved, and the epilogue just did not work for me.  I had to re-read it to cement in my brain what had just happened, and the moment I'd done that I found myself online looking for other bloggers' reviews of the book to see how they had reacted to the ending.  I haven't found any other reviewers that feel there were loose ends or the ending wasn't quite right, but for me it just didn't tie into any of the rest of the story line; it came from nowhere.

It's difficult to say anything more without giving away too much of the story but I would love to know what you thought of the ending and whether it worked for you.  Get in touch by commenting below.....