The Accusation by Victoria Jenkins
Genre: Psychological thriller, domestic thriller, Suspense
Read: 30th December 2020
Published: 9th June 2020
★★★★★ 4.5 stars (rounded up)
DESCRIPTION:
Help me! Help me, please!’
When Jenna hears the cry in the park one night, she feels she has no choice but to run and help. Cradling the injured woman in her arms, the attacker nowhere to be seen, all Jenna wants is to keep her alive until the ambulance arrives and for the ordeal to be over.
But the nightmare begins when the victim wakes up…
Jenna’s relief turns to horror when the finger is pointed at her. There must be some mistake: she’s never seen the woman before in her life, and Jenna tried to save her life. Why would she accuse Jenna of a crime she didn’t commit?
As the case against Jenna grows, her world starts to fall apart. Her teenage daughter is keeping secrets and her husband is growing more distant every day. To save her family and clear her name, Jenna has to prove she didn’t do it.
But someone knows something Jenna did do. And they want to make her pay…
The Accusation is an addictive psychological thriller that asks how far you would go for justice. Perfect for fans of He Said/She Said, The Silent Patient and The Woman in the Window.
MY REVIEW:
Wow! What a book to end 2020 on!
As tomorrow is my birthday (yes, NYE, I know and I hate it), I won't be reading anything else before the end of the year, so I can safely say that THE ACCUSATION was an appropriate edge of your seat thrill ride to end what was otherwise a horrible year.
I have been a fan of Victoria Jenkins since her Detectives King and Lane series and have followed her journey into the psychological genre. Her debut thriller "The Divorce" was average, then came "The Argument" which was pretty phenomenal...and then there is her latest...THE ACCUSATION. And wow! I was pretty much blown away. That is...until the end.
Jenna Morgan finds herself confronted with something of a quandary one night when she hears a woman's cry for help. Would you rush to assist? Of course you would. And Jenna is no different. Taking a shortcut on her way home from dinner with friends one night she hears a cry for help and rushing into the darkened park, finds Charlotte laying on the ground with a stab wound to the neck and a figure running away. She applies pressure to the wound, calls an ambulance and keeps her talking till help arrives. After giving police her statement, she returns home in something of a daze.
The following day, Jenna wonders how Charlotte is doing, as any normal person would do. So picking up some flowers, she makes her way to the hospital to see how she's doing. As she enters the ward, she sees Charlotte laying on her bed, her face turned and looking out the window. But nothing prepares her for the blood curdling scream that emanates from Charlotte's mouth as soon as she sees Jenna, shouting "She did it!"
The next thing Jenna knows is that she is being taken in for questioning in relation to Charlotte's attack. But with her word against Jenna's, who will they believe? Whilst she is in custody, the police turn over her house looking for anything to support the allegation. Whatever happened to innocent till proven guilty? It seems Jenna is guilty until she's proven innocent. And how is she going to do that? She doesn't even know who is trying to frame her! Because that's the only thing that makes any kind of sense here...that someone is out to fit her up for something she didn't do.
However, that is not all. Jenna's husband Damien has been somewhat distant with her for the past couple of weeks and Jenna suspects him of having an affair. But she doesn't expect the other woman to be one of her closest friends, Laura. Or at least, that's what she suspects when her teenage daughter Lily confides in her that she has seen them together. Damien is definitely distant with her.
And then there is seventeen year old Lily, who has recently become moody and distant herself...as teenagers go...but Jenna feels there is something more to it. Lily has been seen in the company of an older man and whilst Jenna thought she had put a stop to it she suspects Lily has been seeing him again. The two of them used to be so close but lately Lily has locked herself away in her room, had whispered conversations on her phone till all hours and hanging up as soon as she or Damien walk in. Although Lily's father died when she was just 3 years old, Damien has been the closest thing to a father she has known. She always adored him and the two of them shared a unique bond in their early years. So it seemed strange that now Lily spoke of him with something like distaste. What had happened between the two of them?
Whilst juggling her home life and running a cafe, the last thing Jenna needs is to be charged with attempted murder. Then when the police turn up one morning at her cafe with a search warrant she is speechless when they discover a blood strained knife hidden behind the fridge. Jenna swears she has no idea how it got there...but the evidence against her, although circumstantial, is slowly building up and unless she can prove otherwise she is looking at prison.
Jenna knows she didn't do this. She only tried to help the woman. In fact, she had never even seen her before in her life...so why was she targeting her? What had Jenna done to deserve this? But then Jenna has a secret that no one, not even Damien, knows. Surely that has nothing to do with what's happening here.
But when Damien shows her the anonymous notes he's been receiving claiming that Jenna is not who she says she is and 'how well do you know your wife', she starts to feel her world begin to crumble in on her. But regardless, Jenna knows she must protect her family at all costs.
Wow! I have to say, seasoned sleuth that I am, not even I figured out what was at play till just before the reveal. Well done, Ms Jenkins! It takes a writer with a lot of nous to hoodwink me...lol
Narrated by Jenna herself throughout, THE ACCUSATION takes us through Jenna's past and present in alternating chapters as she tells us how she met Damien and leading up to their marriage. She also gives us a little of Lily's father though sensing as if that a secret she prefers to keep we are left to wonder as to just what kind of man he really was. The story is predominantly in the present but I have to say that the chapters where Jenna takes us back to the past could have been titled as "Past" or something relating to that so as not to confuse it with the present...although it was fairly easy to follow anyway. I think I could just be me being fussy. lol
My only real flaw with the book is the ending which I found to be too abrupt. It ended at the bottom of the page followed by three asterixes, which I naturally thought was a break to segue into a more rounded ending. But I was surprised to turn the page and find...nothing. But a plug for her previous thriller "The Argument". After all the build up, the climax, the tension...I had expected a little more to end on.
But that aside, THE ACCUSATION is thoroughly addictive from beginning to end with a fast pace that never lets up throughout and is a thrill-ride well worth the journey. I loved every minute of it and between this and her last thriller, it's hard to say which is her best.
A well written psychological thriller in which Ms Jenkins has certainly found her niche, THE ACCUSATION has all the twists, all the turns and all the tension to keep you guessing right up to the end. With thrillers like this, Jenkins is right up there with the likes of Shalini Boland and Kim Slater.
I would like to thank #VictoriaJenkins, #NetGalley and #Bookouture for an ARC of #TheAccusation in exchange for an honest review.
MEET THE AUTHOR:
Victoria Jenkins is a Welsh author who has made a name for herself writing the highly popular Detective King and Lane series of novels. The first novel in the series was “The Girls In The Water” that Jenkins first published in 2017 and is an Amazon UK top 30 bestseller, and top 5 bestseller in the Amazon US chart., to much critical acclaim and popularity among crime fiction fans.
The series of novels features Detective Constable Chloe Lane and Detective Inspector Alex King, who are the lead investigative characters that solve some mysterious murders in their hometown.
Her first psychological thriller 'The Divorce' was published in July 2019. The second 'The Argument' was published December 10th 2019. The third 'The Accusation' was published 9th June 2020.
Victoria lives with her husband and daughter in South Wales, where her series of crime novels featuring Detectives King and Lane is based.
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