Book Review: "One Fatal Mistake" by Tom Hunt

There's something to be said about a thriller where you can predict pretty much everything that will happen, yet you can't tear yourself away from it. That was the case with Tom Hunt's One Fatal Mistake. Its pacing left my heart pounding, and even though I had my suspicions about how the plot would unfold, I needed to know where Hunt would surprise me.

Joshua Mayo is 18 years old, a talented golfer with his whole future ahead of him. In just a few months he's heading off to college, where he hopes to study landscape architecture and eventually design golf courses. But one night, everything changes. He accidentally kills a man in the middle of a deserted nature preserve, and fearful of having to go to jail for his bad luck, he decides not to report the crime to the police, and hopes that the body might never be found.

Moving on with his life, however, isn't as easy he imagined it would be. Joshua is wracked with guilt, not to mention fear that somehow he slipped up, and his crime will be discovered. His mother Karen knows something is wrong with Joshua but he won't tell her anything. But when he disappears late one night, she knows she needs to follow him to see how she can help, or even protect, him. That split-second decision sets them on a collision course with disaster, and it could put everything they hold dear at risk.

How far would you go to protect your child? Is there anything you wouldn't do? Karen knows she'd lay down her life for her son. She may have to, unless she can think of a way to get them out of the dangerous trouble they've found themselves in.

There's rarely a slow moment in One Fatal Mistake. I'm being fairly vague in terms of plot description because it definitely helps to let things unfurl little by little. I definitely wanted to shake the characters from time to time for all of the stupid decisions they were making, but who's to say that people in those situations might not act that way in real life?

Of course, as with most thrillers, you need to suspend a little disbelief. But like I said, this is a book that hooked me from start to finish—I read most of it in a few hours—and I like the way Hunt fed the plot to you, little by little. I wish I was surprised a little more, but this was still a roller coaster ride of a book.

NetGalley and Berkley Publishing Group provided me an advance copy of the book in exchange for an unbiased review. Thanks for making this available!