Keeper by Johana Gustawsson #BlogTour #Review @JoGustawsson @OrendaBooks @annecater

It is my absolute pleasure to welcome you to my stop on the Blog Tour for Keeper by Johana Gustawsson. I’d like to thank Anne Cater for inviting me onto the tour and to Orenda Books for providing an ARC. Let’s check it out……

📚BookieWookie Review📚

Wow! Where to start?? Every once in a while you come across an author whose books just blow you away. That is certainly the case for me with the works of Johana Gustawsson, with the phenomenal Block 46 and Keeper. I read Block 46 very recently, in preparation for this tour, and I thought it would have to take something special to meet that same level of storytelling, and Keeper has pulled it off with some aplomb!!

There is a lovely mix of historical narrative alongside present day, and I did wonder how it would all tie together given the vast number of years between events, but Gustawsson pulls this off superbly in what is just a fantastic story. I’m not normally a lover of historical fiction, but I found myself being completely drawn into the story as it progressed through the years. I say historical fiction, but I believe a lot of this is all based around historical facts on Jack The Ripper and his victims (who knew one of his victims was Swedish???).

The subject matter is not for the faint hearted and it may put you off your food a little, but at no point did I feel it crossed a line. If anything, I think Gustawsson got the balance just right, setting it apart from some of the run of the mill crime fiction that is out there today. Like it’s predecessor, Block 46, Keeper was a level above most other books I’ve read this year. There’s just something about them that have completely taken my breath away and placed them, quite comfortably, in my list of best reads of 2018.

Character wise, there are a lot to get your head around here, and each bring a little something to the party. Roy and Castells are the main players, but there is a really strong supporting cast, each with their own personality traits that have a major role to play in the story, from both the police and the criminal side.

I know most crime thrillers these days offer a twist to the tale but OMFG, this one was something a bit special (like …..WTAF!! 😱).

Anyway, enough from me, this book is superb and I’ll be shouting about it for the foreseeable future to anybody that will listen. Seriously folks, this is bloody good and you’ve gotta check it out!!

Awesome stuff!!

📚The Blurb📚

Whitechapel, 1888: London is bowed under Jack the Ripper’s reign of terror.

London 2015: actress Julianne Bell is abducted in a case similar to the terrible Tower Hamlets murders of some ten years earlier, and harking back to the Ripper killings of a century before.

Falkenberg, Sweden, 2015: a woman’s body is found mutilated in a forest, her wounds identical to those of the Tower Hamlets victims. With the man arrested for the Tower Hamlets crimes already locked up, do the new killings mean he has a dangerous accomplice, or is a copy-cat serial killer on the loose?

Profiler Emily Roy and true-crime writer Alexis Castells again find themselves drawn into an intriguing case, with personal links that turn their world upside down…

📚Author Bio📚

Born in 1978 in Marseille and with a degree in political science, Johana Gustawsson has worked as a journalist for the French press and television. She married a Swede and now lives in London. She was the co-author of a bestseller, On se retrouvera, published by Fayard Noir in France, whose television adaptation drew over 7 million viewers in June 2015. Her debut, Block 46, was an award-winning, international bestseller, with Keeper following suit. She is working on the next book in the Roy & Castells series.