Surely the US title 'The Chosen' is a far better title for this novel as she was not ...

Blurb:
He watches.  He waits. He kills ...

When Jessie Conway survives an horrific mass high school shooting, in the aftermath she finds herself trust into the media spotlight, drawing all kinds of attention.  But some of it is the wrong kind.

A sadistic serial killer, had been watching her every move.  A skilled hunter, he likes his victims to be a challenge.  Jessie is strong, fearless, a survivor, and now ... she is his ultimate prey.

As the killer picks off his current victims one by one, chasing, killing and butchering them with his crossbow, he's closing in in Jessie ... But will Jessie defy the odds and escape with her life?  Or will she be the killer's final sacrifice ...

A clever, dangerously twisted thriller that will have fans of Tess Gerritsen and Karin Slaughter gripped until the very last page.

Review:

Self-proclaimed as 'A gripping psychological thriller' but as far as this reader was concerned there was next to nothing psychological about it (not like Jonathan Kellerman or Jeffrey Deaver) nor was it all that thrilling.  But I only discovered this after the fact!

The first few chapters were gripping and held a lot of promise for the book as a whole but continuing reading that potential was not exploited.

The last section of this book was fairly gripping but there was so much backstory and scene setting that nothing really started happening until chapter 38.

One thing that did annoy me was that the author could not decide the name of one of her characters. In a few pages at the beginning of the novel there was a particular person who was referred to as Adam Edwards.  However after these few references the name was changed and thenceforth he was referred to as Alan Edwards, a little thing I know but if the author  cannot decide his name why should we be invested in their characters?

This story is told from multiple Points of View ('POV') which also meant that there was a certain amount of overlap in the stories.  Also this constant change interrupted the story so that the new character spent quite a while talking about their feelings and there was extraneous dialogue.  The killer was neither compelling nor scary ... all the killings were intimated at but never once was one described in detail.

The female lead was neither completely likeable nor completely hateful as were the remaining characters.  As with such books of this ilk they all do things that are rather silly but for the female lead when she was in peril she did use her head more than most and happened upon an unlikely weapon.  For this reader the chase was the bet part of this novel.

Unfortunately there were not many twists ad turns or red herrings in this novel apart from its title (perhaps the more appropriate American title of  'The Chosen' should have been used in the UK).

For this reader this particular novel was really disappointing.  It seemed that there too much story overlap, too many unnecessary details, and too many typos.  All things that lead to a rather disappointing read.

Thank you Netgalley for a chance to read this novel in exchange for an honest review.

The novel was rated 2 stars overall.