Oh, my days! Talk about an audacious plot! Is this the right time to admit that this is the first Olivia Kiernan book I’ve read? Well, if all the plots are as good as this I’m going to be devouring her back catalogue!
Myles and Lana, almost a stereotypical happy young couple with good jobs, a big house when…… and there has to be a when doesn’t there…. otherwise we wouldn’t have a story, one of Myles’ investments fails. Problems. But then new neighbours, Gabriel and Holly Wright seem to have a possible solution. Insurance fraud! As long as they get their cut the Wrights will help.
And that’s as much as I’m going to say because I don’t live in Spoiler City! But oh my goodness this is a dark, sinister, kind of tale. Very much character driven, and I have to say I didn’t warm to any of the characters particularly. And I’m never sure whether that’s intentional on the part of an author. I have a hunch that it doesn’t do to get too emotionally invested in characters who are capable of doing questionable things. I did quite like Nathan and Daniel who played their parts in the narrative very well.
This is one of those books that is described as a thriller, but it’s not an action packed thriller, very slow and brooding which really racks the tension up. One of those books where even while you’re reading you’re glancing over your shoulder….just in case. It almost had a Patricia Highsmith feel to it, and some of those B-movies that Hollywood did so well in black-and-white. And the ending! Oh, my!
The end of us? I don’t know about that, but it was nearly the end of me as I hurtled on to find out what an earth was going to happen! But there has to be more to a book than a good story, doesn’t there? Or maybe that’s just me. But this book had a lot to say about acquisitiveness, avarice, implicit entitlement and subterfuge. It also taps into the 21st-century, social media type consciousness of how things look on the outside.
It’s a book that keeps you guessing, and although on the surface it seems like a completely unrealistic premise it is written so well that your belief rarely falters and given what goes on in this contrary world of ours today I guess all things are possible.
My thanks to Ana McLaughlin at riverrun for a gifted proof. Olivia Kiernan is very firmly on my radar now.
No comments:
Post a Comment