The Poison Tree: the addictive , twisty debut psychological thriller from the million-copy bestselling author

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Paul Seaforth is a man fighting with the concepts of loyalty when he is sent to Kelstice Lodge to volunteer in the garden until his friend’s murder trial begins, and he must take the stand as the “star witness.”

Despite the slow build-up, Kelly makes it very clear that nothing good can come from these dynamics. And whilst I did predict a major part of the “twist” (I read A LOT of these mysteries), I was still invested to watch the slow descend into disaster as both Karen and Rex act as if remote-controlled by Biba’s destructive hand. I love a good character study, and the way poor Karen gets drawn into the Capel siblings’ world was well executed. I related to some of Karen’s fascination with the Capel’s lives – “straight A student falls for more exciting personalities” is a theme that really does play out in real life. A wonderful premise for a novel that is part character study and part domestic thriller and will undoubtedly stun some readers with its twist.What about Daniel's trial? What about Paul's poor mother? She's already expecting, how did she feel she's about give birth to a new life knowing her first born is no more?

but really - it's just a fast-paced crime thriller and is not likely to stay with me for any real amount of time. With both Louisa and Paul hiding from the past they form a relationship but how much of their former lives are they willing to reveal to each other and who is out there looking for them?

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The first time I read The Poison Tree is one of my strongest and most enduring reading memories. It was an unseasonably hot day in April 2011, and I got through almost all of it in a few hours while sat on a grassy bank in a park near my old sixth form college. Both setting and weather seemed a perfect fit for Erin Kelly's debut, which brims with heady nostalgia. I do think Kelly is a talented writer, which is why I've read three of her books. I just wish her characters were a little more likeable, or at least a little more fleshed out, not so formulaic in their vulnerability, or distress. The endings, of her books are also kind of predictable. I am not saying I wouldn't read one of them again, but maybe three, one after the other, was just not the best idea to get the most out of them, without starting to sense a pattern. Anyway. When Paul informs her with all this information, hoping that Louisa will be super happy knowing she isn't a murderer after all. Knowing she won't have to hide anymore... Daniel is quiet. Without any friends. And Paul soon realises Daniel has knowledge but he is an illiterate. He can't read or write. So they make a deal. Paul will be helping him manage his life being an illiterate, and Daniel will be his bodyguard, watching out for him whenever he is in trouble. A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.

Nothing is off the table as long as it’s done well. Psychological thrillers are littered with duplicitous husbands and amnesia but if the characterisation is strong and the sentences work hard and the plotting is skilful then you can get away with it. The only thing I really can’t stand is laziness: novels concocted from tropes rather than coming from the heart. And the entire time I was thinking and processing, what could this book even be about? Simply just about what happened in their past, is that it? I came to know.. That WAS it. Naïve Karen. Hedonistic Biba. Respsonsible Rex. One long hot summer. Two dead bodies. A life time of secrets. Louisa became this possessive girlfriend, where the idea of Adam cheating on her haunted her dreams. And that's fair, but she should have known what kinda guy Adam was before getting into all of this. I mean, he WAS seeing a girl when she met him, remember? He dumped that girl for Louisa, who's to say he won't dump her for someone else?Till that point it was pretty much clear she might have been Adam's murderer. But the why and how were the mystery which gets solved. Also, I didn't feel that the was a "psychological" build up for the "genre" that this book was placed in was as strong as either her last book or what I would expect from the genre. Also, her timing fell flat to me. It just really seemed to "stumble" around. Not only did characters jump around, but the timeline did as well. This can work, and I have read numerous books where the author has done this type of format masterfully, but this one did not work. Paul was led into a life of crime by his boyhood protector, a bully named Daniel; but one night, what started as a petty theft turned into a grisly murder. Now, at nineteen, Paul must bear witness against his friend to avoid prison. Louisa's own dark secrets led her to flee a desperate infatuation gone wrong many years before. Now she spends her days steeped in history, renovating the grounds of a crumbling Elizabethan garden. But her fragile peace is shattered when she meets Paul; he's the spitting image of the one person she never thought she'd see again. Or can they? There are mysterious phone calls. Someone's watching, from the shadows. The past, and the dark secrets it holds, don't seem to want to go away. The picture is slowly filled in – from both sides, then and now. There are things, outlines, sketches (is Biba still alive? Did she do it? Did Karen do it? Do we even know what "it" is?) that you can guess at but won't become clear until next week's conclusion.