Book Description:
A DEATH
AN ACCIDENT
A STUPID MISTAKE
Traumatised by the death of a patient in her chair, Glaswegian dentist Radha Bakshi succumbs to an addiction to Valium she can’t acknowledge – even to herself.
The pills take the edge off trying to be a consummate professional, a perfect daughter, a devoted wife and a not-too-embarrassing mother to her teenage son.
When increased scrutiny of her work forces her to find a new source of supply, she stumbles into the menacing clutches of blackmailing drug dealers.
A mistake that could cost her everything.
My Thoughts:
Dental Practice’s aren’t my favourite of places, like most of us no doubt. Even a six month check up is too often for me and think this story made me even more nervous about going!
Radha lets a bad experience with a patient take over her and becomes reliant on pills to help her get through the day. Even with the pills she finds herself still struggling to treat her patients as well as snapping at her colleagues. In some respects I did feel sorry for her but if you learn anything form this story, it is drugs are not the answer. Her addiction takes her down a murky path which has her, her family and her work, all under threat.
I found this whole novel so tense. Questions were constantly running through my head as to whether Radha was going to be able to get herself out of the horrible mess she had found herself in. Drug dealers are not people you ever want to have to deal with and I couldn’t see how any possible outcome would end up being good. The author has the reader wrapped up in Radha’s life along with her lies to her family and friends. It really was engrossing.
What I Hid From You is a story that explores getting involved with drugs and what affects it can have on not just the person taking them but the people around them. It isn’t just what the drugs themselves can do to you but getting caught up in the drug underworld and what a terrifying place that can be. Family dynamics are everything in this novel and I enjoyed the closeness of Radha and her dad especially. This book will certainly have you thinking twice about making wrong choices in life as there can be a lesson learned here. A heart pounding page turner!
My thanks to Kelly at Love Books Tours for the invite to be on the tour. All opinions are my own and not biased in anyway.
Heleen Kist is a Dutch, formerly globetrotting career woman who fell in love with a Scotsman and his country, and now writes about its (sometimes scary) people from her garden office in Glasgow. What I Hid From You is her third novel.
She was chosen as an up-and-coming new author at the international crime festival Bloody Scotland 2018. Her debut, ‘In Servitude’ won the silver medal for Best European Fiction at the Independent Publishers Book Awards in the USA and was shortlisted for The Selfies awarded at London Book Fair. Her feminist thriller ‘Stay Mad, Sweetheart’ was a finalist in the Next Generation Indie Book Awards and won third place in the inaugural Book Bloggers’ Novel of the Year award 2020
bytheletterbookreviews 
Thank you so much for your review, Sarah. The family dynamics is why this is the book of mine that’s closest to my heart.
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HUGE thanks for your support of the tour. Kelly xx I hope to see you at Bloody Scotland or Harrogate.
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