#BlogTour Hydra by Matt Wesolowski @ConcreteKraken @OrendaBooks #Hydra #SixStories

So today I’m delighted and excited to be part of the blog tour for Hydra by Matt Wesolowski today. Hydra is book two in the Six Stories series based on Scott King and her Serial style investigative podcasts. I had heard a lot about the first book, Six Stories, and was really keen to read it so I jumped at the chance to read Hydra and resolved to read Six Stories first, which I almost didn’t do but once I started Hydra I quickly realised that I needed to read the first book forst. But that makes this a bit different as I’m going to review Six Stories before I go on to Hydra. If you’ve read Six Stories or are only here because of Hydra then feel free to scroll down.

My Review of Six Stories:

I was intrigued to read Six Stories having heard so much about it but I wasn’t really sure what to expect. What I got was the story of a young boy called Tom who had gone missing, only for his body to be found a year later in a quiet and secluded fell, the crime had never been solved and the case was now considered to be a cold case.

Scott King has a podcast, over six episodes her talks to different people involved in one crime trying to uncover what really happened and who might have done it. So here she talks to Tom’s friends who were with him that fateful night and to the adults who were in charge at the outward bound centre that he went missing from.

I liked how the story was slowly revealed as we put the pieces of the puzzle together as we found out more about Tom and his friends and what they had been up to before he went missing. But the story doesn’t put all the pieces into place, we get to think for ourselves and make up our own mind about what we think might have happened.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading Six Stories, it’s a bit different and very well written and definitely the start of a promising series.

Blurb:

1997. Scarclaw Fell. The body of teenager Tom Jeffries is found at an outward bound centre. Verdict? Misadventure. But not everyone is convinced. And the truth of what happened in the beautiful but eerie fell is locked in the memories of the tight-knit group of friends who embarked on that fateful trip, and the flimsy testimony of those living nearby.

2017. Enter elusive investigative journalist Scott King, whose podcast examinations of complicated cases have rivalled the success of Serial, with his concealed identity making him a cult internet figure. In a series of six interviews, King attempts to work out how the dynamics of a group of idle teenagers conspired with the sinister legends surrounding the fell to result in Jeffries’ mysterious death. And who’s to blame…

As every interview unveils a new revelation, you’ll be forced to work out for yourself how Tom Jeffries died, and who is telling the truth. A chilling, unpredictable and startling thriller, Six Stories is also a classic murder mystery with a modern twist, and a devastating ending.

My Review of Hydra:

Having recently read and thoroughly enjoyed Six Stories I was looking forward to reading Hydra, book two of the six stories series. Firstly, I would definitely recommend that you read Six Stories first as I started to read Hydra without having read Six Stories and I didn’t get very far before I had to admit that I was very confused and wasn’t really sure what on earth was going on. Once I read the brilliant Six Stories I was able to return to Hydra and get into the story or Arla, a woman who murdered her parents and little sister.

This case is a bit different to Six Stories in that that one focused on a cold case, but this case had been solved and everyone knew that Arla had killed her family. But what nobody knew was why. So when Arla said that she would only speak to Scott King he was keen to see if he could find out what had happened on that fateful day and why.

If I’m honest I preferred the story in Six Stories, but Hydra was still a cracking read that kept me guessing and thinking right the way to the end.

Thank you to Orenda Books and Anne Cater for a copy of Hydra. All thoughts are my own.

Blurb:

One cold November night in 2014, in a small town in the north west of England, 26-year-old Arla Macleod bludgeoned her mother, father and younger sister to death with a hammer, in an unprovoked attack known as the ‘Macleod Massacre’. Now incarcerated at a medium-security mental-health institution, Arla will speak to no one but Scott King, an investigative journalist, whose ‘Six Stories’ podcasts have become an internet sensation.
King finds himself immersed in an increasingly complex case, interviewing five witnesses and Arla herself, as he questions whether Arla’s responsibility for the massacre was a diminished as her legal team made out. As he unpicks the stories, he finds himself thrust into a world of deadly forbidden ‘games’, online trolls, and the mysterious Black-eyed Children, whose presence extends far beyond the delusions of a murderess…
Dark, chilling and gripping, Hydra is both a classic murder mystery and an up-to-the-minute, startling thriller, that shines light in places you may never, ever want to see again.

About The Author:

Matt Wesolowski is an author from Newcastle-Upon-Tyne in the UK. He is an English tutor and leads Cuckoo Young Writers creative writing workshops for young people in association with New Writing North. Matt started his writing career in horror and his short horror fiction has been published in Ethereal Tales magazine, Midnight Movie Creature Feature anthology, 22 More Quick Shivers anthology and many more. His debut novella The Black Land, a horror set on the Northumberland coast, was published in. Matt was a winner of the Pitch Perfect competition at Bloody Scotland Crime Writing Festival in 2015. His debut thriller Six Stories was an Amazon bestseller in the USA, Canada, UK and Australia.

Six Stories and Hydra by Matt Wesolowski are out now and available from Amazon UK and Amazon US.