When Sami Kierce was backpacking in Spain as a college grad, he met Anna and immediately fell for her. But when he woke up next to her dead body with a bloody knife sticking out of it, he ran straight back to the United States. As far as he was aware, this was behind him.

In the present day, events are conspiring to swamp Sami. The murderer of another of Sami’s past girlfriends has been released from prison due to faults in the evidence and he approaches Sami to help him prove his innocence of a crime that Sami is certain he is guilty of.

And one night in Sami’s detective class at night school, a woman walks in and then runs into the night. A woman that Sami recognises. Anna.

If you’ve read Fool Me Once – or seen it on Netflix – you may recall Sami’s character (although if you’ve only seen the Netflix series, you should know that he’s distinctly less British in the books). I certainly don’t recall him mentioning the two dead women in his past but I suppose it’s not the sort of thing that you bring up without reason. I’ll be honest, I’m not sure why the lead character needed to be Sami when a new character could have worked just as well. Who knows, maybe the rights have already been sold to Netflix and they’ve already signed Adeel Akhtar to return…

Sami is a good focal character for the story, as the whole book focuses on him. I particularly liked the relationship with his wife, Molly, and the twists and turns around Anna’s story are extremely well-crafted, with the reader constantly having their expectations undermined.

I didn’t think the other story really had the page-space to breathe though, and it very much plays second fiddle to the main story, and is resolved very quickly. It felt in hindsight that it was only there to crank up the tension and provide a certain development in the other story, as while it is very intriguing, there isn’t much threat involved in the Anna story.

All in all, I enjoyed the book a lot, but it’s not up there with my favourite books by the author. Still well worth your time though.

Nobody’s Fool is out now in hardback and ebook. Many thanks to the publisher for the review e-copy via NetGalley.