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the_jenkins's review against another edition
dark
emotional
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
2.0
swimchickmle's review against another edition
3.0
3.5 stars.
This was an okay suspense book. It was kind of slow for my liking, hence the 3.5 stars. I didn't see the twist coming at the end, and it was decent. I guess what I like best about this book is that I am still not sure if Rachel is the one with the mental issues. I seriously think she is loose a few marbles. I mean, Clara did try and frame her for her mothers murder, but I think that it was Rachel that won out in the end. And that Rachel killed one person, and attempted to kill another.
This was an okay suspense book. It was kind of slow for my liking, hence the 3.5 stars. I didn't see the twist coming at the end, and it was decent. I guess what I like best about this book is that I am still not sure if Rachel is the one with the mental issues. I seriously think she is loose a few marbles. I mean, Clara did try and frame her for her mothers murder, but I think that it was Rachel that won out in the end. And that Rachel killed one person, and attempted to kill another.
mimi_schreibt's review against another edition
4.0
Spannend bis zum Schluss. Leider fand ich die Übersetzung aus dem Englischen an einigen Stellen etwas holprig, daher nur 4 Sterne.
libraryjunkie's review
4.0
A psychological thriller that shocks the reader throughout the entire book all the way up to the last page. It's a story about an unlikely friendship that ends in an unlikely tragedy. The storyline and characters are well developed and will manipulate the reader, making it impossible to trust any of the characters and causing the reader to question their most basic motives and reactions. I would call this a cross between Gone Girl and Defending Jacob.
fictionophile's review against another edition
4.0
You don’t have to be female to enjoy this debut novel, but I’m pretty sure that being female will help you to understand it. After all, this is a novel about the precious commodity of female friendship – and nothing can be so complicated. After all… only those who know you best can really manipulate you emotionally.
“Precious Thing” will appeal to anyone who enjoys a well paced psychological thriller. It contains no gratuitous violence, no blood, no gore. However, it is a creepy and disturbing novel that contains plot twists and engaging characters. Some of the plot twists I could predict – some were surprises. Although a debut novel, it does not read like one and has been compared to the best-selling “Gone Girl” by Gillian Flynn.
Thanks once again to NetGalley for the digital version of this novel.
Read my complete review of "Precious Thing" on my blog:
Fictionophile
“Precious Thing” will appeal to anyone who enjoys a well paced psychological thriller. It contains no gratuitous violence, no blood, no gore. However, it is a creepy and disturbing novel that contains plot twists and engaging characters. Some of the plot twists I could predict – some were surprises. Although a debut novel, it does not read like one and has been compared to the best-selling “Gone Girl” by Gillian Flynn.
Thanks once again to NetGalley for the digital version of this novel.
Read my complete review of "Precious Thing" on my blog:
Fictionophile
laural27's review against another edition
5.0
Wow!
That’s all I can say about this book. It is absolutely fantastic.
Precious Thing tells the story of Rachel and Clara – lifelong friends and keepers of each other’s secrets. They met when Rachel was the new girl at school and since then have been inseparable. Rachel has got it all, she’s a big shot TV reporter, has a nice flat and of course a gorgeous boyfriend whilst Clara’s life is beginning to unravel. When Clara goes missing, Rachel ends up questioning everything she once thought about her friend. Can we really know everything about our best friend?
This book was just insanely good. I read it in just one afternoon, not able to put it down for one second. It hooks you in, sinks its claws into you and won’t let go even after you’ve turned the last page. Precious Thing explores so many intriguing themes, the main one being friendship, and each one is explored in such detail.
The friendship between Rachel and Clara was a suffocating one – it was a really intense relationship which made for compelling reading. Rachel was a really interesting protagonist and throughout the novel I was on her side, struggling to see why someone like Clara should even be considered a friend. Likewise, I disliked Clara and was rooting for her to be found out! The character development in this novel is, well, it’s remarkable. By the end of the book, the characters seem so far removed from the ones we met in the beginning – it was incredibly well written.
McBeth, for a debut author, has got the pacing down to a fine art. It can sometimes be difficult to get the pace of a thrilling novel right, it either ends up moving too quickly or has some peaks and troughs of pure thrills and then moments of dullness! What McBeth does in Precious Thing is flawless. I was clinging onto each word, rapidly turning the pages, not once feeling bored of what was going on.
It’s really hard to go into any more depth about characters and plot because this book is one that needs to be read to be understood and one that will be spoiled if I give any more details away.
I must say though that this is potentially the best crime/thriller debut I’ve read in a very long time. The twists and turns, the heart stopping moments, the unpredictable plot…it was all sublime.
I cannot wait to read the next novel from Colette because I am certain that she will become a very big name in the writing world before long.
A must read debut that will shock, thrill and excite you.
That’s all I can say about this book. It is absolutely fantastic.
Precious Thing tells the story of Rachel and Clara – lifelong friends and keepers of each other’s secrets. They met when Rachel was the new girl at school and since then have been inseparable. Rachel has got it all, she’s a big shot TV reporter, has a nice flat and of course a gorgeous boyfriend whilst Clara’s life is beginning to unravel. When Clara goes missing, Rachel ends up questioning everything she once thought about her friend. Can we really know everything about our best friend?
This book was just insanely good. I read it in just one afternoon, not able to put it down for one second. It hooks you in, sinks its claws into you and won’t let go even after you’ve turned the last page. Precious Thing explores so many intriguing themes, the main one being friendship, and each one is explored in such detail.
The friendship between Rachel and Clara was a suffocating one – it was a really intense relationship which made for compelling reading. Rachel was a really interesting protagonist and throughout the novel I was on her side, struggling to see why someone like Clara should even be considered a friend. Likewise, I disliked Clara and was rooting for her to be found out! The character development in this novel is, well, it’s remarkable. By the end of the book, the characters seem so far removed from the ones we met in the beginning – it was incredibly well written.
McBeth, for a debut author, has got the pacing down to a fine art. It can sometimes be difficult to get the pace of a thrilling novel right, it either ends up moving too quickly or has some peaks and troughs of pure thrills and then moments of dullness! What McBeth does in Precious Thing is flawless. I was clinging onto each word, rapidly turning the pages, not once feeling bored of what was going on.
It’s really hard to go into any more depth about characters and plot because this book is one that needs to be read to be understood and one that will be spoiled if I give any more details away.
I must say though that this is potentially the best crime/thriller debut I’ve read in a very long time. The twists and turns, the heart stopping moments, the unpredictable plot…it was all sublime.
I cannot wait to read the next novel from Colette because I am certain that she will become a very big name in the writing world before long.
A must read debut that will shock, thrill and excite you.
leahmichelle_13's review
3.0
When I heard about Colette McBeth’s debut novel I thought it sounded really great. I haven’t read many psychological thrillers, but I have read a few and have recently just finished Paula Daly’s wonderful second novel Keep Your Friends Close which was ridiculously twisty and very hard to put down, so when I received Precious Thing, I couldn’t quite wait to get stuck in! I wanted to see if it was just as impressive as Keep Your Friends Close, and I started Precious Thing with very high expectations. It was a bit of a strange novel for me – I enjoyed it, and the ending was out of this world insane, but the novel did lag in parts during the middle of the novel, I have to say.
Toxic friendships are my favourite topic to read about. However, I of all the toxic friendships I’ve read about, I don’t think any can top Rachel and Clara’s. It was NUTS, and I could only really appreciate how nuts once I had finished the novel and it had all come out. It is the second novel in a row that I’ve read where the ending of the book has got my all hyped up and excited, hardly able to believe what I’ve just read. I do sort of wish the rest of the novel had had that pace to it, because the rest of the novel was severly lacking in shocks and revelations, which is such a shame. I did keep reading the novel, it wasn’t a bad read, I just think the middle of the book saffed somewhat after a very promising beginning and a ridiculously unbelievable ending.
I enjoyed reading about Rachel’s bid to track down Clara, and I totally believed in their friendship, up to a point. I felt quite duped when it was all revealed, because it wasn’t the most toxic of friendships – it was just as if they were two best friends who would do anything for each other, isn’t that what best friends do? But as the novel wore on, it all became clear that perhaps Clara wasn’t the person we thought she was. It was very much like we’d been given the news version of Clara – a best friend who had just disappeared, with no bad stuff attached, and we were blinded to the truth. And we were, blinded to the truth about the pair of them! It was a very interesting tale to get us from beginning to end, though, and the person I felt most sorry for was Rachel’s colleague Jake, who soon becomes a bit more than a colleague, and more of a friend. I ended up feeling VERY worried about him.
Precious Thing was very clever, and in the end it became ridiculously twisty, the ending of a novel has barely surprised me as much, and I’ve read lots of twisty books recently. Colette McBeth is a wonderful writer, and I just wish it hadn’t lagged in the middle, as it seemed to just slow down a bit more than I would like, but the beginning and end were amazing. I will definitely be reading Colette’s second novel when it’s released later this year, because this novel was very fascinating, with characters I realise I never really knew AT ALL, which is a very bizarre feeling! It was like reading about strangers, I’ve never felt less connected to characters, but it worked. Thank you, Colette, for a very twisty, head-wrecking read with a very unexpected ending.
Toxic friendships are my favourite topic to read about. However, I of all the toxic friendships I’ve read about, I don’t think any can top Rachel and Clara’s. It was NUTS, and I could only really appreciate how nuts once I had finished the novel and it had all come out. It is the second novel in a row that I’ve read where the ending of the book has got my all hyped up and excited, hardly able to believe what I’ve just read. I do sort of wish the rest of the novel had had that pace to it, because the rest of the novel was severly lacking in shocks and revelations, which is such a shame. I did keep reading the novel, it wasn’t a bad read, I just think the middle of the book saffed somewhat after a very promising beginning and a ridiculously unbelievable ending.
I enjoyed reading about Rachel’s bid to track down Clara, and I totally believed in their friendship, up to a point. I felt quite duped when it was all revealed, because it wasn’t the most toxic of friendships – it was just as if they were two best friends who would do anything for each other, isn’t that what best friends do? But as the novel wore on, it all became clear that perhaps Clara wasn’t the person we thought she was. It was very much like we’d been given the news version of Clara – a best friend who had just disappeared, with no bad stuff attached, and we were blinded to the truth. And we were, blinded to the truth about the pair of them! It was a very interesting tale to get us from beginning to end, though, and the person I felt most sorry for was Rachel’s colleague Jake, who soon becomes a bit more than a colleague, and more of a friend. I ended up feeling VERY worried about him.
Precious Thing was very clever, and in the end it became ridiculously twisty, the ending of a novel has barely surprised me as much, and I’ve read lots of twisty books recently. Colette McBeth is a wonderful writer, and I just wish it hadn’t lagged in the middle, as it seemed to just slow down a bit more than I would like, but the beginning and end were amazing. I will definitely be reading Colette’s second novel when it’s released later this year, because this novel was very fascinating, with characters I realise I never really knew AT ALL, which is a very bizarre feeling! It was like reading about strangers, I’ve never felt less connected to characters, but it worked. Thank you, Colette, for a very twisty, head-wrecking read with a very unexpected ending.
majesdane's review
3.0
I didn't realize it until I was about 3/4 of the way through, but this books bears many striking similarities to [b:Under Your Skin|18143772|Under Your Skin|Sabine Durrant|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1391969840s/18143772.jpg|21773243] by [a:Sabine Durrant|416529|Sabine Durrant|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1309754630p2/416529.jpg]. There's a few different nuances here and there, of course, but in both cases you have a female TV news reporter (who of course seems to know more than she lets on) as a narrator. And they're both set in England (and were both published in 2014!). Suffice to say, if you liked one, you'll like the other.
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