Ready to discover another great book for this 2021? Take a look…

The Favour by Laura Vaughan

Genre: Psychological Thriller
Source: Random Things Tours
Rating: 4/5
Publisher: Corvus
Amazon, Hive

About The Book

When she was thirteen years old, Ada Howell lost not just her father, but the life she felt she was destined to lead. Now, at eighteen, Ada is given a second chance when her wealthy godmother gifts her with an extravagant art history trip to Italy.
In the palazzos of Venice, the cathedrals of Florence and the villas. of Rome, she finally finds herself among the kind of people she aspires to be: sophisticated, cultured, privileged. Ada does everything in her power to prove she is one of them. And when a member of the group dies in suspicious circumstances, she seizes the opportunity to permanently bind herself to this gilded set.
But everything hidden must eventually surface, and when it does, Ada discovers she’s been keeping a far darker secret than she could ever have imagined…

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My Thoughts

This is a book with no middle terms,  you can love the characters or hate them with all your heart. They are horrendous, deceiving and sociopaths, they only believe in their own profit, anything or anyone else is not important. Welcome to “The Favour”.
There’s one beautiful thing in this book, the art, the author explains in detail while our characters take a luxurious trip to Italy, where one of the travelers dies, and the plot will get much darker…
I am used to read books with vile characters, but I think this one takes a step further and makes you wonder the profundity of the word “vile”, because I have to say that no one in the story seems nice, they all want to succeed in their motivations no matter the price, specially the main character Ada Howell. She wants to be one on the top, no matter what, so when she thinks she can use the secrets she knows for leverage, she doesn’t hesitate to start taking profit from it.
But, don’t get me wrong, the characters are horrible and this makes the book more addictive, you don’t like them or their behavior but deep inside you want Ada to succeed, to have all the things she wants, at any price, of course. This is a slow paced story, told with full details, so well plotted that you can start feeling the thoughts like they are yours, making it more dangerous and scary than ever. Because, if you, a mere reader, can “understand” the worst desires, what can a cold and calculating person do to succeed in their Machiavellian plans? There’s one certain thing, anything in this book is left to luck, everything is calculated in detail… Be prepared!
Ready for “The Favour”?

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About The Author

Laura Vaughan grew up in rural Wales and studied Art History in Italy and Classics at Bristol and Oxford. She got her first book deal aged twenty-two and went on to write eleven books for children and young adults. This her first novel for adults. She lives in South London with her husband and two children.