Trapped by Sarah Gorman was the 36th book I read this year and my first review of an Indie book sent to me through the Indie spotlight post I did on Tiktok.
As I was struggling to support new/indie/ debut authors through ARCS etc because I’m not reading as much this year, I had this idea of a regular feature, where I shine a light on an indie/ small print etc authors through short and sweet ‘spotlights’ on my blog.
However, I did actually have a few of the authors kindly offer their books for review, no matter how long I needed to read them. So this is my first Indie Spotlight that contains a review of the book!
Indie spotlight: Sarah Gorman
About Sarah Gorman:
Sarah began writing as therapy when she had to give up her nursing career due to a degenerative disease.
Where to follow Sarah Gorman
TRAPPED – Sarah Gorman
Sarah Hill has a simple life but then she decides to start her own business. It is through her business she meets Callan Jones. Her life is about to change and not for the better.
Faced with Dilemmas, decisions and emerging secrets, She doesn’t know who she can trust.
Full of twists and turns that you wouldn’t expect
My review
This book jumps between the present where Sarah is trapped in her flat for reasons we don’t know yet and the past, where she begins to build a successful business, using her creativity and entrepreneurial mindset. Everything is going well until she meets Callan, who visits her shop for helping planning a proposal to his girlfriend but there is instant chemistry between them. This is when things start to go wrong as the consequences of this attraction unfold. While Sarah is distracted her friend, who is now her employee, begins to feel resentful of the extra work she’s expected to do and starts to take advantage of all this time in the shop alone…
I thought there were so many clever elements of this book, we’re definitely presented with a few red herrings about who has trapped Sarah in her flat in the present and why, plus who meant Sarah and her business harm. No spoilers but I did gasp when I realised who her mid-wife was.
There were some aspects of the writing that needed a little tweaking, some of the dialogue didn’t feel as authentic as it could have been. There were some minor plot holes and little things that didn’t feel real enough to me such as her time in the hospital after and the police investigations. These were all things that as this writer grows will definitely fix themselves and certainly weren’t enough to bring you out of the narrative.
The suspense in this book was slow and creeping, with a sort of general sense of dread in both the past and present that I thought was really well done. This is a nice short read, so will be a good one for people who want a little thriller/ suspense read that’s not too intense or long but has enough mystery to keep you interested!
Where to buy
The book is available to buy on Amazon here
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Antonia Bernardin 
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