Another great psychological thriller from Mark Edwards who can relied on to write a great page turner. This one in set in current day and 1999 when a hand picked team of six young people, Will, Sophie, Lily. Rohan, Georgina and Theo, are working on a special project to write the best dating app. They were hired by Professor Sebastian Marlowe after completing many psychosomatic and similar tests. They are now in Sebastian's house for the summer together with Dominic, Sebastian's nephew, and Eve a local girl who is looking after them as a housekeeper. In current day, Georgina and Theo are married with two daughters and invite the other four from the original team to a dinner party to commemorate the recent death of Sebastian. Finn is also invited as he was assistant to Sebastian in recent years. Dominic and Eve are not in the current day gathering and bit by bit the reader learns more about what happened in 1999. The plot is fulls of twists and turns with more and more revelations. Indeed, things get tense and violent as two armed thugs appear on the dinner party scene and attempt to find secrets from 1999. I wasn't too keen on this aspect of the plot as I didn't care for the violence and threats of torture. The plot is very tense and gets a bit frenetic but never dull.

A duel timeline story about a group of people who worked on developing a dating app twenty five years ago. Most of them haven’t seen each other since then but when the app creator dies they are all invited to a dinner party. A twisty psychological thriller that I found a bit slow at times but overall I enjoyed the story. Thank you to NetGalley and Michael Joseph, Penguin Random House for my e-copy in exchange for an honest review.

The Wasp Trap by Mark Edwards This is one of those stories where I like no one, care about no one, and trust no one. After all, when six post grad friends get together more than twenty years later and something bad or more than one something bad happened long ago, you know there are some folks who were up to no good and are still hiding secrets now. Their mentor back in the day, Sebastian, had them help build a dating website based on psychological testing although the most tech-y of the group became interested in developing a test to ferret out psychopaths and she was eager to test her ideas on those around her. Wouldn't you like to know your test results on a test to ferret out psychopaths? Do you want to know who among you is a psychopath? The work Sebastian and his team were doing, along with the lodging and living support for the six people he had on the project, was supposed to provide some great future benefits to the six but suddenly, just as there was cause for celebration back in 1999, instead Sebastian had each of the six packed up and driven to their homes and the project was over, no hopes of earnings from it in the future, and for most of them no contact with the others for over twenty more years. Things went on that night, long ago, someone knows something, and everything was skuttled because of whatever went on back then. In the present day, the six are in London, at the home of two of the team members who married after the project, and they are here to celebrate the life of their recently deceased ex-employer/professor Sebastian. Our narrator is Will and he's looking forward to seeing Sophia, who he had fallen for all those years ago. It never feels like the group settles in that well before things go really bad for them all. Being held at gunpoint by people they don't know and being told that they must come up with a secret from long ago has the group realizing none of them might make it out of this place alive. The home of Theo & Georgina, the couple hosting this celebration turned madhouse, has a state of the art home security system that has them locked in and no one can get out of the place, no matter how desperate the situation. Very much a locked room/locked house psychopathic nightmare. Just what was going on all those years ago to cause this group to be terrorized in this manner now? It helps not to be enamored with this group so that I could sit back and be very judge-y about everyone without caring too much who lost their lives. I know, cold of me but that's me trying to emotionally survive what seems hopeless chaos. The situation is dire and I can't say what I would do that was better than what anyone else does. The tension is sky high, the danger is enormous, and the situation seems inescapable. All I could do was keep reading and watch the trainwreck happen and hope to find out the reason behind it all. Thanks to Atria Books and NetGalley for this ARC.

I’ve enjoyed a number of books by Mark Edward’s and this isn’t exception. It’s a bit of a slow burn start, but the pace soon picks up and it becomes a complex and intriguing psychological murder mystery thriller! There’s a reunion after 25 years of a group that worked together. But it’s no ordinary reunion; they all have secrets and something to hide and it turns out that their original collaboration had a literal sting in the tail. It’s told from a number if viewpoints and across two timelines, so it’s a complicated picture to piece together. Especially as the reader has no idea who to trust; they’re non too reliable. This is a bit far fetched, but I enjoyed it nevertheless. It’s tense and twisted and the end was a revelation. My thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for an early review copy.

1999 and a diverse group of university graduates are assembled at the house of Professor Sebastian Marlowe. A man of big ideas and the funds to implement them, Professor Marlowe has gathered these young people to help him produce an internet dating app. Not the usual matchmaking site, something far more sophisticated and thorough, and he now has the people, his revolutionaries, to help him achieve his aims. Twenty five years later and the group are once again together, having been out of touch for years, thanks to the abrupt ending of the dating app and its launch. At a dinner party hosted by two of the original members who are now very much an extremely wealthy power couple, there is much reminiscing. That is until things take a sudden turn that is totally unexpected. Told over the two timelines this is a captivating and thrilling read, never sure what is coming next and how will it all resolve. An author I admire very much and this is another well thought out book, and really good read. Will definitely recommend.