One Bad Thing by M.K. Hill

Blog tour: 31 January to 10 February 2022

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

Psychologist Hannah Godley is an agony aunt on a Saturday afternoon radio show in London and, on her last day before making the move to TV broadcasting and the Morning Brew daytime TV show, she answers a call from a woman called Diane who talks about her brother, Martin. He was bullied and treated badly by two strangers and then later killed himself.

Hannah is shocked – she recognises the incident as she was one of the people involved! She’s felt guilty ever since and has tried to put it behind her. She makes contact with Diane after the show and they meet up, and from then on we’re taken on a wild, twisty ride as Hannah’s life starts falling apart and Diane appears to be following Hannah – popping up in the same places and lurking around waiting for her. She seems totally harmless but also so menacing, disturbing and suffocating at the same time!

Hannah starts questioning everything – her relationship with husband Sean and with her friends, even closest friend Izzy and her husband, Ollie.

This was such a tense and gripping read with so many red flags and I had no idea who to trust! Diane is so creepy and pushy and made me feel really uncomfortable and nanny Siobhan (Shiv) is rather suspicious as well and I couldn’t really work her out. I didn’t trust her with Hannah and Sean’s 18-month-old daughter, Amber. Sean seems rather unreliable as well – too many liquid business lunches and drinking sessions with his mates!

Hannah has a very difficult relationship with her parents, especially after the sudden death of her sister, and she hasn’t treated people well in the past and has had several turbulent relationships. You can see that these experiences have really affected her and left her with a rather reckless streak.

Overall, this was a well-written and cleverly plotted read, with great suspense, and I was turning the pages frantically to see how it was all going to play out – there were so many shocking moments, especially one fairly nearly the beginning that I definitely did not see coming and had me messaging a friend who had already finished the book!!

It was fast paced and very entertaining, with lots of brilliant twists! When I wasn’t reading the book, I was trying to work out which of the characters was really behind everything and had several theories, mostly wrong!

This was the first book by the author that I’ve read but I’ll definitely be checking out his Sasha Dawson series now!

Buy the book

One Bad Thing by M.K. Hill can be purchased from Amazon on Kindle and in hardback, and as an eBook from Kobo and iBooks. See also Ethical Book Search.

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.

One Bad Thing is his latest standalone thriller, again using the fast moving world of broadcast and TV as background for this compelling psychological thriller.

He is married with a son and lives in London. 

Twitter: @markhillwriter
Facebook: @MarkHillAuthor
Instagram: @markhillwriter
Website: https://mkhill.uk

Blog tour

Thanks to Sophie Ransom at Ransom PR for my proof and hardback copies of One Bad Thing and for my place on the blog tour.

See the banner below for more stops on the #blogtour.