Review: Red Flags - JE Rowney

Review:  Red Flags - J.E Rowney - September 2025

There's a particular kind of magic that happens when you're scrolling on your Kindle, half looking for something new and half just killing time before bed, and a cover reaches out and grabs you by the collar. That's exactly what happened with Red Flags. I'm a sucker for a good thriller, and I love it when fiction gets a bit edgy, so the vibe pulled me in straight away. What I didn't expect was for this book to take me somewhere so much deeper than I'd bargained for, curled up with a cup of tea, expecting a bit of drama and instead getting a proper, sit-with-you-after-the-last-page kind of read.

At the heart of it all is Clara, and honestly, my heart went out to her from the very first chapter. She's the sort of woman who just wants what most of us want, someone to build a life with, a hand to hold, a person who chooses her and keeps choosing her. But love hasn't been kind to Clara. Every date is a fresh disaster story, and just when you think she's finally found the one, he's off getting engaged to someone else within two months. Two months! I found myself getting genuinely indignant on her behalf, the way you do when your friend tells you about her terrible ex over a glass of wine. Can one person really be this unlucky in love? Reading Clara's string of near-misses and heartbreaks, I kept thinking about every friend I've ever consoled after a bad breakup, and how universal that particular ache is.

So when a colleague nudges her toward a new dating app called Swiper, of course she thinks, what have I got to lose. And that's where the story does something clever. It lulls you into thinking you know what kind of book this is. A few unremarkable swipes, a few duds, and then Elias. A 95% match. The messages start flowing, and Clara starts glowing, that lighter, freer version of herself that appears when someone finally seems to just get you. I found myself rooting for her here, wanting this one to be different, wanting her to catch a break.

And then the rug gets pulled. An app update wipes every trace of Elias away, as if he never existed at all. Just Christoph now, a stranger she never asked for. It's such a small, mundane sounding thing, an app update, and yet it completely upends Clara's world, and mine along with it as a reader. What follows is Clara's descent into a world she never knew was sitting right underneath her, the world of AI companionship, and this is where the book stopped being just a love story gone wrong and became something that's genuinely stayed with me.

I'll admit, this stretch of the book gave me real Wicker Man vibes, that new film everyone's talking about, the sense of a community hiding something just beneath a friendly, welcoming surface. It's unsettling in the best way. JE Rowney doesn't hit you over the head with the message either, she just lets you sit in Clara's shoes and ask the questions alongside her. What are we willing to accept, to overlook, even to embrace, if it means finally feeling loved? How far would any of us go?

But it was the quieter question underneath all of this that really got me thinking, and honestly, got to me a little. Are we still using AI as a tool, or have we started to lean on it as something closer to companionship? How many of us have typed our worries into a chatbot late at night rather than ringing a friend, just because it's easier, quieter, doesn't ask anything back of us? Where exactly is that line between real human connection and something artificial standing in for it? Reading Red Flags felt like being gently confronted with that question rather than lectured about it, which I think is exactly the right way to do it.

I'll be honest with you, this book made me think about my own mum. She's been gone a while now. There was a moment reading this where I genuinely thought, wouldn't it be something to upload all of that and have a companion I could talk to when I miss her most. And then, almost in the same breath, the book made me ask myself, would that be comfort, or would it just be a very clever, very convincing way of never quite letting the grief finish its work? 

What I loved most about Red Flags is that it started as something I picked up for a bit of escapism and left me with genuine, lingering questions about loneliness, love, grief, and what it means to be truly seen by another person, or something pretending to be one. It's the kind of book you finish and then find yourself still turning over a few days later, maybe while you're scrolling your own phone a little differently than before.

If you love thrillers with an edge but want something that also makes you feel and think in equal measure, curl up with this one. Just maybe keep your own phone at arm's length while you do.

Amazon: https://link.amazon/B0bLjX1cU