Welcome back to my Behind the Book series, where I pull back the curtain on how my psychological thrillers actually came to be. Today it's the turn of my newest release, Facing Shadows — a dual timeline psychological thriller for anyone who's ever wondered what the perfect man is hiding. Grab a cuppa, get comfy, and let's get into it.
What's the book about?
Facing Shadows is a dual timeline psychological thriller that unfolds across two versions of one woman's life.
In the THEN timeline, she's twenty-six and falling for James. James is charming, gorgeous, successful, the kind of man who sweeps you off your feet. He looks, for all the world, like the perfect man. But if you read closely, you'll notice the little things first: the way he prefers her hair down, the way he orders the cake she doesn't like, the way he twists his own words until she's the one apologising.
In the NOW timeline, four years later, she's single, skint, and travelling almost two hours out into the Scottish wilderness to a remote retreat called Safe Haven. She's gone there to clear her head. To get away. To finally breathe. But a locked gate in the dark is waiting for her — and so, it turns out, is her past.
It's a slow-burn, claustrophobic read about coercive control, the stories we tell ourselves to convince ourselves that things can always get better, and what happens when the thing you ran from follows you all the way to the middle of nowhere. And, this being one of my books, there may be a twist or two waiting in those shadows.
What inspired the book?
The advice given for thinking of ideas is to ask 'what if...'
What if a car ploughed into my fence right now?
What if my dog threw up a murder weapon?
What if my husband was having an affair with a murderer?
I could go on forever and find this activity SO much fun.
In Facing Shadows I started with - What if someone went somewhere secluded to escape their past, but the past followed them there?
There's something primal about that idea. We all fantasise about running away when life gets heavy. A cabin. A retreat. Somewhere with no signal and no history, where you get to be nobody for a while. But what if the very isolation you craved became the thing that trapped you? What if you couldn't outrun what you were carrying, because you brought it with you?
That question wouldn't leave me alone. And the more I sat with it, the more I realised the "past" she was running from couldn't just be an event. It had to be a person. Someone who looked perfect from the outside. Someone everyone else adored. Because the most frightening villains aren't the ones lurking in alleyways — they're the ones holding your hand.
And so the two timelines were born: the slow, creeping how-did-I-get-here of THEN, and the isolated, nowhere-to-run dread of NOW.
Was it difficult to write?
Honestly? Yes. Facing Shadows deals with domestic abuse, and that's always hard to write — it's a subject I never take lightly and never want to get wrong.
The tricky thing with coercive control is that it rarely looks dramatic from the outside. It's a thousand tiny moments that each seem almost reasonable on their own. He just loves her hair down. He just wants the afternoon to be about them. He just didn't like her tone. Written badly, a reader rolls their eyes and asks why she doesn't simply leave. Written honestly, the reader feels the fog she's living in — and that's a far more uncomfortable, far more truthful place to put someone.
My heart goes out to anyone who has lived through this, or is living through it now. Those battles are real, they're rarely obvious to outsiders, and it's always okay to reach out for help. Please just make sure you're reaching out to the right people. Domestic abuse isn't love, it's control. Love yourself by taking back that control. Please.
And then there were the twists…
If you've read any of my other Behind the Book posts, you'll know I have a slightly chaotic relationship with plot twists. Here's my dirty little secret: I don't always know the twist before I start. It tends to arrive while I'm writing, which means I then have to go back and change the book so the twist actually works.
But here's the neverending part — the moment I change the book to fit the twist, the twist itself shifts, because the story is now different. So I change it again. Which changes the twist again. Round and round we go. It's a bit like trying to tuck in a fitted sheet: get one corner right and another one pings off. Cue curse words and a sweaty brow.
It sounds maddening, and it is. But I wouldn't trade it for anything. That messy, circular process is genuinely one of my favourite parts of writing psychological thrillers. It's where the book comes alive, where the clues get buried, where the "oh my god, it was there the whole time" moments are quietly stitched into place. So much fun.
Why you might love it
If you're drawn to slow-burn psychological suspense, dual timeline thrillers, unreliable feelings and morally complicated situations, I think Facing Shadows will be right up your street. It's a standalone, like all my novels (so far - watch this space), so there's no reading order to worry about — you can dive straight in.
It's for the readers who side-eye the "perfect" couple at the dinner party. Who know that the scariest stories aren't about monsters, but about the people we're supposed to trust most. Who want to be kept up far too late whispering "just one more chapter."
Writing Facing Shadows reminded me exactly why I write in the first place: to explore the dark, complicated corners of human behaviour, and to ask uncomfortable questions that don't have tidy answers. If any of this intrigues you, I'd love for you to meet her — and James — for yourself.
You can grab Facing Shadows as an ebook here (it arrives instantly by email) or order the paperback here. Buying direct from my shop makes a real difference to an independent author, and I'm endlessly grateful to everyone who takes a chance on my stories.
And if you fancy a proper binge, you can pick up all seven of my psychological thrillers in one money-saving bundle.
Happy reading — and remember, the perfect man is usually hiding something (I just hope it's a big schlong).
Clare