Today is my stop in the Blog Tour for Kiss Me, Kill Me by JS Carol. This thriller has been described as dark and uncomfortable and also as truly sinister. If this picked your curiosity, I have a very intriguing extract to share with you today!
Title: Kiss Me, Kill Me
Author: JS Carol
Published: February 22nd 2018 by Zaffre
Blurb: When Zoe meets Dan, he's everything she is looking for in a man - intelligent, charming, supportive.
It's only after they're married that she realises that he's controlling, aggressive, paranoid.
And there's no way out.
Or is there?
Zoe knows she has to escape, but Dan's found her once before, and she knows he can find her again.
But Dan has plans of his own. Plans that don't necessarily include Zoe.
Be careful who you trust . . .
FOR FANS OF THE MARRIAGE PACT AND CLARE MACKINTOSH COMES A TWISTING PSYCHOLOGICAL THRILLER THAT WILL MAKE YOU QUESTION EVERYTHING YOU THINK YOU KNOW.
Extract
Cooking Daniel’s dinner was its own kind of hell. Standing at the stove, all those mouth-watering smells wafting around her, it was too much. On the few occasions where she dared to steal some, the guilt and paranoia had almost killed her. She had sat there at dinner slowly driving herself crazy, because he must have known what she had done. How could he not have? But he hadn’t said a word, and she had breathed a silent sigh of relief and promised herself it would never happen again. Except that was a lie, because eventually it would reach the point where she couldn’t help herself and the cycle would start all over again, need battling guilt like she was a junkie.
The big hand moved slowly past the nine, and the ten, and then the eleven. She wanted to eat, wanted to eat now, but she made herself wait. Five minutes today would be ten tomorrow; by this time next week it would be an hour. It just wasn’t worth it.
Zoe counted the second hand through the last thirty seconds then got up from the table. Her refrigerator was the small under-counter one. On the top shelf were two plastic containers containing her lunch. Usually everything she needed to prepare Daniel’s dinner would be on the middle one, but because they were eating out tonight this was empty today. This was the smallest of mercies, but when hope was in such short supply you took what you could get. Seeing the ingredients sitting on the shelf, being able to look but knowing that was all she could do, was a whole other circle of hell.
Lunch was the same every day, just like breakfast was always cornflakes and water, so, even without looking, she knew what she would find. In the first container there would be five sticks of cucumber, a two-inch square of chicken and ninety-nine grains of brown rice. The soup was in the second container, although to call it soup was a stretch. It was thin and watery, and totally tasteless. Daniel made a new batch every Sunday evening and split it into seven containers, each marked with a day of the week. The Monday one was left in her refrigerator; the rest were locked in the freezer.
She put the food onto a plate and there was more white china than food, like nouvelle cuisine, albeit a twisted version. The temptation was to hurry, but she made herself take it slowly, chewing each mouthful properly before moving on to the next. She ate the two-inch square of chicken first. It had been boiled, and it was as though the process had leached all the flavour away. Next she moved on to the sticks of cucumber, eating them one at a time to make the meal last as long as possible.
Before eating the rice, she counted the grains. She had watched Daniel put them out onto the kitchen island yesterday evening. He did it the same way each time. When he was finished there would be nine neat piles containing ten grains each arranged in three rows of three. Off to the right there would be a single lone pile of nine. She had considered asking him why he did this, but she wasn’t sure she wanted the answer.
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