Jenny Blackhurst Books In Order

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Jenny Blackhurst is a popular fiction author from Shropshire in the UK best known for writing crime thrillers. She grew up with a love for talking about and reading crime and novels, which inevitably led to her transitioning into the writing of crime fiction. She debuted her writing career with “How I Lost You” a story of loss inspired by the birth of her son. Like many authors Jenny let adult responsibilities prevent her from achieving the dream of becoming a published author. However, she reignited the spark she had since childhood when she got her son in 2011 and got down to writing chapters in between nappy changes and feeds. Prior to becoming an author she had studied for a Masters in Psychology and worked for the Shropshire Fire and Rescue Service as a Fire Safety Systems Administrator.

Jennifer started writing again in 2011 after she was laid off and found that she still had the writing bug. As a person that had read crime fiction all her life it was a natural progression from reading to writing. She has asserted that she constantly has thoughts of “what if”, which often makes everything that she writes into a crime thriller, her first love. She cites the likes of Patricia Cornwell as one of her earliest inspirations into the reading of crime fiction, as she would read her novels aged only eleven. As she progressed in years, she found inspiration from the likes of Mo Hayder, Sharon Bolton, Alex Marwood and Sophie Hannah. Jennifer’s first pregnancy inspired the writing of her bestselling debut “How I Lost You” as she had many mixed feelings during this period of life. It was an emotionally intense time when she was questioning her identity about who she was before and what she was now, which made for quite the fertile ground for the plot of her debut. She was feeling suggestible and vulnerable and a whole combination of other feelings that made it easy for her to write an explosive story about the loss of a child and how it would feel like. Given that she has a Masters in Psychology, the writing of crime thrillers comes easier to her. Jenn who describes psychology as a study of behavior and the mind, how our histories shape the present and future, why people respond differently in given situations, and nurture versus nature, finds the writing of crime thrillers a lot of fun.

Jennifer Blackhurst’s “How I Lost You” is the story of how one woman experiences problems for the first time in her life. Susan had been someone that never had to confront the everyday problems that most people do. As such, Susan may come across as naïve and too trusting, believing the best in others which can oftentimes lead to people taking advantage of and hurting her. The loss of her child Dylan and her mother serves as a wake up call given that while she is still hopeful, she is now broken and has lost most of her naivety. She becomes a survivor and grows over the course of the novel to become a strong woman and a survivor ready to tackle the problems presented by life head on. The story in “Before I Let You In” is about three friends Eleanor, Bea, Karen and Jessica who is a patient to Karen. Even though they are friends, they are all very different persons in personality and attitude. All of them have a deep secret that they hold back from each other as would be expected. Blackhurst excellently shows the joys and pitfalls of friendship as the women try to showcase the best of themselves to each other and to the world. The story is essentially about female relationships, human frailties, and how everyday normalcy can be turned on its head in an instant.

“Before I Let You In” is a story about Eleanor, Bea, and Karen that have been childhood friends. Even though they are now adults in their thirties, they are still good friends and often visit each other at their homes or go out for lunch whenever they can. Karen is a psychiatrist and group fixer, Bea is a single lady that loves life without a man or children, while Eleanor is the archetypal forgetful and tired mother. Karen had recently taken on a new patient at her practice named Jessica, who has just complicated the lives of the three friends, not that they know it. A few sessions with her patient and Karen discovers that her patient certainly knows more about Eleanor, Bea, and herself than she ought to. But Karen’s hands are tied with professional confidentiality and hence she cannot tell her friends. She is determined to ensure that her friends are not in harm’s way but is not sure what Jessica intends to do with the information she has. It is an exhilarating novel that takes one by the scruff of the neck right from the first page. It is so certain that something is about to go terribly wrong but you simply cannot tell what with all the twists and turns and cliff hangers that just keep you flipping through the pages.

“How I Lost You” tells the story of Emma Cartwright formally married to Mark and who used to be known as Susan Webster. She had been the mother to a boy named Dylan but had lost it all when the child died and she was found guilty of his murder. She now lives all alone in Shropshire where she only has a murderer she met in prison as the only person she can call friend. But things change when she one day receives a picture of her supposedly dead son, which seems to suggest that he may not be dead after all. Once diagnosed with clinical depression, such news could result in confusion that could send Susan into unwanted directions. Things get worse when her door is sprayed in red paint, a dead cat is thrown into her bedroom, and her house is broken into. Teaming up with her only friend Cass, they embark on a journey to establish the truth. She is a victim of a vengeful person even as she seeks to determine fact from fiction in the story that sent her to jail. What she knows is that the person out to get her may have something to do with keeping her unbalanced, in a quest to prevent the truth from coming out.