Online dating has never been more deadly as some are about to find out in this book. Sonya Romano is fed up with so many of her supposed single dates, ending up lying and already being married or in relationships. None of her first blind dates has turned out well, beign complete disasters really and putting her off dating almost entirely. She had been using the MetMee dating app, and after creepy first meetup, to a plastic surgeon suggesting she get her nose fixed and other improvements he could make to her, to ensure she represented properly as his wife, to another she could never tie down for a date. Angry at the plastic surgeon’s comments, she decided to make him pay in a roundabout way. Her latest one she managed to figure out the true identity of and decided to face him and record get him to admit he was married on video. She followed him to a place he often went for hikes and when she surprised him, he got angry and lunged for her, but he was over the barrier and too close to the cliff edge and falls to his death. She has no idea if she might get accused of killing him and so runs off without calling the police and deletes the video she was going to show his wife. She decides she should stop using the app, but just as she does, a new match comes up with a man called Jake Parker, who in reality is a reporter now working in a demeaning job, where his boss wants him to produce a click bait story about dating apps, going along for the ride himself as a single man. His first few choices turn out to be pretty much a nightmare, but then he meets a woman called Claire Atkins, who could almost make him want to see her outside of the app and soon telling her exactly what he is really doing!
Jake was once a Pulitzer nominee and a serious reporter, but now all he does is fluff pieces now and wishes for a story that could get him back on a serious news team, doing proper stories. As he continues his dating journey, he finds out about the death of the estate agent, which the police had deemed an accidental fall, and the fact he had been on the same dating app. When he talks to Claire, he finds out about the plastic surgeon as well and soon gets the feeling that the two events were connected and his tingly senses are firing! He thinks a woman on the site may well be targeting the married men who have joined this dating app, and his story starts to concentrate on that, rather than what his editor wants. He has matched with Sonya, and they seem to have an almost perfect match between them. But some of those similarities are the ones he had figured out were from the woman who matched with two of those men. Sonya is trying to lie low and cover up any tracks she may have left, deleting anything that could connect her to these men and what happened to them. Sonya and Jake meet up for a date, Jake because she could be the killer and Sonya because she just can’t ignore how much he could be someone she could see a future with. They can’t deny their attraction, but neither is quite sure how much they can trust the other. What they don’t realise, is that there is a deranged psychopath out there targeting them both, and just how much danger they are actually in. A great twisting story that makes you believe you know who the person dogging their every move might be, but then you get proven wrong! Completely unexpected twist at the end and some fantastic subterfuge.
I received an ARC copy of this book from BookSprout, and I have freely given my own opinion of the book above.