One Fatal Night – Hélene Fermont

Good day book friends!

Today’s blog tour wasn’t an immediate hit for me although it had some very positive aspects! The synopsis is borrowed from Goodreads:

One woman’s quest for revenge unearths a fatal secret from her past.

Astrid Jensen holds one man responsible for her mother’s suicide, and she’ll do whatever’s necessary to get close to Daniel Holst and destroy his life – even if it means sleeping with him to gain his trust. Astrid knows he’s not who he pretends to be. But before she can reveal his dark secret, people from her mother’s past start turning up dead, and it looks like she and Daniel are next. In order to survive, she might have to put her trust in the man she has hated for so long.

Daniel Holst has worked hard to climb into Norway’s most elite and glamorous circles, and he’s not about to let any woman bring him down. But when a psychopathic killer starts murdering people from his shadowy past, he discovers that the only person who might be able to save him is the woman who wants to destroy him.

One Fatal Night starts very promising. I love the drive of the story and it is constant action from the very beginning to the end! For such a short book I was surprised that I preferred the constant action instead of some slow parts which is what I usually prefer. The plot of this book is really good! I loved most of the plot twists, however, I would have loved the book to be a little bit longer because some of the situations just became too cliché for me. I suppose the reason for some of the more immediate situations was caused because the book is so short (only a 133 Kindle pages) but certain times a bit more time and explanation to fully understand everything would have been nice. It’s ups and downs with everything!

Now, before I’m starting my character rant I have to say that I did some research on Fermont prior to writing this. The characters are, what should I say, way too dramatic to be Norwegian. Fermont is Anglo-Swedish so I think that’s why I had higher expectations towards how she portrayed her characters. Norwegians are strange, I’ll be the first one to admit it but I’ve never met anyone like Astrid. Although I’m sure someone like her does exists. When I read the book I was wondering if I’d walked into Real Housewives of Beverly Hills thriller style because those moods were all over the place! Several times I had a hard time taking the reaction of several characters seriously..And while we are at seriously weird stuff: WHO DRIVES TO BEEGEN FROM OSLO ON A DAY TRIP TO JUST TALK TO HIS MOTHER?! It’s a 6 1/2 hours drive without traffic…No, I just don’t buy it. Not in the modern world of cellphones. However, this and some therapist stuff were my only real issues with the book.

A some point I tried to flip the behavior of the characters on its head. I read online that Fermont is known for psychological thrillers, which this one most certainly is, and in terms of serious psychological damage the behavior makes more sense. These characters all have some serious luggage and I suppose that really shines through in all of them. When you have baggage like these characters seems to have I suppose its hard to expect what they might to, and if you look at it like this, then you have an exciting element within all the characters. Again, if the book had been a bit longer I think it would have been easier for me to understand why the characters behvae the way they do.

One Fatal Night wasn’t quite my type of book even though it has several good elements to it. The characters lost me a little bit sadly, even with the many possible ways of looking at them. However, if you’re into short and actionfilled thrillers I really do recommend that you give this book a go!

Published: 2020

Genre: Thriller

Theme: Family, friends, enemies

– The Book Reader