Title: Kerry Returns
Author: Annette Salt
Publisher: AuthorHouseUK
ISBN: 978-1-5462-9844-1
Genre: Mystery, Suspense
Pages: 66
Reviewed by: Beth Adams

Read Book Review

Author Annette Salt demonstrates her skills in setting up the psychological thriller’s characters in her novella Kerry Returns.

Kerry returns home to where she lived with her girlfriend a year after she had mysteriously gone missing. She surprises her girlfriend, Melaine, by showing up out of the blue, and not willing to talk about where she has been. Additionally, with cuts on her body and arms in which she won’t talk about, the author brings more curiosity to the situation. When the trio tries to put things back the way it was, albeit while keeping an eye on the strange behavior Kerry exhibits, they aren’t quite able to make things once again “normal” for Kerry. Annette Salt cleverly allows Melaine to offer to move back to her home so Kerry can feel more comfortable settling into her old place. Those efforts quickly go astray.

The book, being short, gets to the point of the drama rather quickly. All of a sudden there are bodies, blood, bludgeoning and murder done with an overtone of sexual stimulation in a merciless bizarre fashion. Suspense builds as people begin to disappear while the police, D.S. Smith and his colleagues, are trying to piece together the situation. Among the stench of rotting corpses the story is brought to a climax and the fate of Kerry is revealed.

Kerry Returns is a quick read, easily capable of being paged in one sitting. The foreshadowing of the ending becomes apparent as the plot plays out without many twists or turns. The characters are defined well for their roles, but many aspects of their personalities could have been elaborated upon, as this book is a psychological thriller. It would be recommended to have this book edited for grammar and other obvious mistakes to enable a smoother reading experience.

Yet to fill the purpose of a quick thriller, Kerry Returns would be an ideal book companion for traveling, as it could be read in about an hour, making it a good book to provide food for thought and a bit of a ride on the dark side of life. Annette Salt has a good storytelling way of using dialogue, and I would like to see her develop her style and depth in future novels.