Payday

After reading only the first few pages of Celia Walden’s debut thriller, I knew I had to publish it. Payday has all the ingredients of the best thrillers – a shocking opening, brilliant characters whom you believe in wholeheartedly, and an absolutely killer twist right at the very end.

Payday follows the fallout of one evening, when three women who don’t know each other very well end up exchanging confidences about their boss, Jamie Lawrence. Everybody in their firm seems to love Jamie except, it transpires, Jill, Nicole and Alex. They all recognise Jamie for what he is: an exploitative and misogynistic power-hunter, with no scruples about using women for his own end. And they agree that something must be done to bring about his fall from grace.

However as the book progresses, the women become less certain of their plan. They are all navigating their own dilemmas,  and they’re starting to wonder how much they can really trust each other. After all, there’s more than one side to every story, isn’t there?

Then Jamie is found dead. And suddenly they realise they have everything to lose, and everything to hide  . . .

Payday will have you racing through the pages to get to its breathtaking denouement. It’s an incredibly clever thriller: poignant, witty, and incredibly entertaining.

Rosanna Forte