I read this fantastic book review of Angela Clarke’s Trust Me by Sophie Hedley, and now I am even more excited to read the book – I am currently making my way through all three of Anglea’s books and highly recommend them. Read this review and you will totally understand why:

Trust Me is the third book in Angela Clarke’s Social Media Murder series following book one, Follow Me, and book two, Watch Me. I mentioned all three in my Top Ten Social Media Books post because I couldn’t choose a favourite and they are all really credible, smart and up-to-date representations of social media and the dangers it possesses.

In Trust Me, the social media of choice is Periscope, where Kate stumbles upon a live video on her laptop of a girl being raped. Kate is absolutely stunned but knows she needs to do what she can to help the victim, even though she may not have survived the attack. The thing is, the video soon disappears, Kate knows nothing about the people who were in it and nobody really believes Kate can really have seen what she says she’s seen.

That is where Freddie and Nas come in. Though they are busy investigating a missing persons case, Freddie is the first person to give Kate’s story a proper listen. She’s the first person to truly believe Kate, and as Kate goes public about what she saw, Freddie and Nas begin to wonder whether their missing person’s case and the video Kate saw may be linked.

As with the other books in the series, Follow Me and Watch Me, Trust Me is pure brilliance. The author’s grasp on social media and the way she utilises it to create shocking yet realistic crimes with storytelling full of twists and turns – it’s irresistible reading. Even though I still can’t pick a favourite of the series, this one did hook me instantly and I was fascinated by how things would play out. Each book in the series seems to have got darker than the one before and I love how thought-provoking the themes always are. I couldn’t imagine what I would do if I saw something as awful as Kate did through a video on social media, yet it was entirely plausible. There’s all sorts of horrific photos and videos posted up online, and there could be a time when you see one and you can’t just scroll past and try and forget about it. Kate’s story left me thinking even when I’d put the book down.

Putting the book down was something I found difficult though as I was very engrossed in the story. I loved being back with Freddie and Nas and seeing the challenges they faced this time. Their development runs along nicely side by side with the main story and the investigation of the crimes in Trust Me made for gripping reading. With each book in the series I find that I view social media a little differently afterwards. Social media can be perfectly harmless escapism or it can be a grim and dangerous place and the author depicts this well. With short yet perfectly hard-hitting chapters, Trust Me is gritty crime at its best. It’s complex yet convincing, proper edge-of-your-seat reading.

Via: http://socialmediastories.co.uk/reviews/book-review-trust-me-by-angela-clarke/