SYNOPSIS
She thought she’d got away with it. She was wrong.
Hannah Godley is an agony aunt on a London radio show Queen of Hearts. She’s warm and empathetic; a good listener. Her catchphrase is: Be kind, always. But when a stranger phones in to tell a tragic story about her brother who killed himself after he was the victim of a terrible prank by two people, Hannah goes cold. Because she remembers Diane’s brother well. In fact, all these years later, he still haunts her dreams. All because of that one bad thing she did when she was young…
Is Diane just a sad, lonely woman looking for a friend, or does she know what Hannah did, and is looking for revenge? Because as Diane insinuates herself into her life and family, Hannah is going to discover that you can never truly escape that One Bad Thing you did – sooner or later, you’re going to have to pay the price…
MY REVIEW
This had me completely gripped from start to finish. Hannah Godley is a psychologist, she does a weekly radio show where she is an agony aunt known as the Queen of Hearts her catchphrase is Be Kind, always. She has been offered a job on a morning tv programme and is doing her final Saturday radio show, but when a caller named Diane calls in and begins to tell a story about her brother Martin, how he had been bullied by two people many years ago, how it had traumatised him. There is something about this call that makes Hannah very nervous, what is it about the call? Does Hannah know Diane? What is the one bad thing Hannah did in her life?
Hannah seems to have it all, a nice house, a husband she loves, a beautiful baby daughter Amber, and she is about to start a new job on prime time tv on an award winning morning show. But after that call to the radio show she is nervous. Husband, Sean has arranged a party on the night that Hannah finishes at the radio which is the last thing she wants. But Sean likes to be the life and soul of the party, Hannah knows if he has to cancel he will sulk. So the party goes ahead. But someone writes something on the bathroom mirror in red lipstick, but who would do that?
Hannah manages to get hold of Diane’s phone number, she decides to give her a call to arrange to meet her. Is that the best decision? What is Hannah hiding? Now Diane keeps turning up and Hannah is getting more and more nervous.
This is so well written you just have to keep turning the pages to find out what was the one bad thing, the author keeps you guessing, with twists and turns. Hannah’s anxiety is real, could Diane really ruin Hannah’s life? You feel the tension, but whatever the secret is I felt for Hannah. I liked Hannah because whatever she had done I felt that she was truly remorseful. How many people don’t do that one thing they may regret later when they are young?
There are several characters that you wonder about, but when the ending came it was not what I had expected, but it all added up, it all made sense and tied the whole story up neatly with no loose ends. A very satisfying psychological thriller that I would highly recommend.
A ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ out of ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ read thank you to @AriesFiction for an ARC of this book and to Sophie Ransom of @soph_ransompr for my spot on this blog tour.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
MARK HILL was born and brought up in Essex and went on to become a journalist and an award-winning music radio producer for Radio 2 before becoming a full-time writer. The first novel in the Sasha Dawson series, The Bad Place, was described as ‘everything a police procedural should be’ by The Times, who also named it as their crime book of the month. He is married with a son and lives in London. One Bad Thing is his latest stand-alone thriller, again using the fast moving world of broadcast and TV as background for this compelling psychological thriller. There is also TV and film interest in Mark’s next book.
Background for One Bad Thing (in MK Hill’s own words)
‘One Bad Thing and my last book have both featured minor celebs, which is a world I know a little about after working at the BBC. I was interested in writing about someone whose whole public persona is based around kindness, caring and empathy (ie Hannah), but who has perhaps not lived up to those standards in the past. We all change and learn, we’re arguably not the people we were as teenagers, but in this day and age, with cancel culture – it’s hard to be forgiven for past mistakes. I thought that was an interesting angle. I’d like readers perhaps to think that people can change over time – and that we can make up for the sins of the past.
My writing is very character based, and I like getting into the head of the compromised characters; people who are under pressure. I don’t believe anyone is all good or all bad – so it seemed like a natural evolution.
One of the other key characters, Diane, is the embodiment of the kind of social anxiety and sense of being an outsider that many people have. Somebody who isn’t innately bad but who doesn’t understand the social boundaries that others have.’
Jackie’s Reading Corner 