Online bookclubs are great but, once I found out that people were shitting on this one I checked out. I have wanted to read this since it came out because the title sounds so certain and yet, the book itself reads like a total mystery. Contemporary crime that one would normally find in the paperback bin of the W.H Smith travel shop is nothing to be sneezed at. Whether you’re wanting some shifty mysteries in your life or, if you’re just in a reading slump – these fast-paced books told from multiple third person limited perspectives that centre around social drama are definitely a go-to.
Jude has a child named Betsy and they’ve just moved to a new town. Betsy had to move school because she was getting bullied and, since Jude’s partner is no longer in the picture – Jude takes Betsy to a wonderful small-town school in Lowbridge. There, we meet the school mums. There’s the sharp-tongued snobby Victoria, the plain and simple Sorrell, there’s the nowhere-to-be-seen Theresa and many more. In and out of the picture there are also a number of husbands and ex-husbands. But weirdest of all to Jude is a new man she’s been seeing; a single father and professor named Will Ledger.
From: Amazon
Will seems to be the only single father really into doing the school run properly and not bringing fast-food to the school gates like Victoria’s ex-husband, Andy – who’s job is with the police (that’s important). Will was initially with a woman named Ali, but she died. Then he was with a woman named Robyn, and she ‘disappeared’. It definitely starts to look a bit shifty and with someone randomly coming and beating up Will, it looks even shiftier.
Andy was on the case investigating but turned up nothing. After prying through setting a voice recorder in his son Noah’s teddy bear – (trying to get his children back through proving Victoria is an unfit mother), Victoria is heard conversing with the other mums in her garden about warning Jude off Will. Andy might find this part interesting enough, but what is even more terrifying to him is the fact that Victoria has admitted that Noah may not be his son at all.
Before that though, the night at Victoria’s is going quite well. But all of a sudden a mum named Caz gets up and leaves whilst the conversation turns to what happened to Robyn. Another mum named Dawn listens eagerly on as she too, remembers what Robyn was like – she will warn Jude about Robyn’s ‘character’ later on and why Caz could no longer stand to be around.
From: Amazon
Sorrell though, has to take a phone call from her husband who is suffering from depression. He’s hit something in the road with his car – or maybe it was someone. He doesn’t quite find the words to say it. The writing is intense, filled with whispers and atmosphere, each character has a very distinct voice and the writer does a brilliant job of carefully shaping the mystery using every single person.
Within this same realm is Sorrell trying to do the best for her husband but struggling. Their children have noticed a change in their father but he is still present. As Sorrell deals with someone who is trying to blackmail her for £20’000, her husband (a dentist) must work on the jaw of policeman Andy who needs an extraction after being punched in the jaw on Saturday night – when he wasn’t on his shift. As we learn in a Whatsapp conversation that Theresa has not only taken off, but also has some stuff belonging to others – there’s a weird shift in Victoria’s air that makes her want to confront the woman. But she’s about to learn more about the ‘why’ than she thought she wanted to.
This story is woven so perfectly and with everyone’s personalities, you can definitely side with the writer and say ‘yes, that is definitely a thing this person would do.’ But, then again you’re misdirected and proven slightly wrong. By the middle of the book, I didn’t know what to believe about who and was definitely waiting for the reveal. It became nearly impossible not to think about – even though I knew full well these people didn’t exist, I had formed completel opinions about them. Maybe the writer is trying to show us that we are just as judgemental and our judgements can be terrifyingly wrong a lot of the time.
Throw a diary into the mix with someone turning up dead in a ‘suicide’ and you’ve got a recipe for catastrophe. There’s some affairs in the past but they are being brought up, darkness looms over a man accused of killing two people, but with another dead there’s more reason to suspect everyone. As marriages break apart and people do night-time stake outs, everyone seems to have something to hide. The dead woman’s diary turning out not to be hers is one thing but the theory that the dead woman might not be dead is a whole next thing.
All I can say about this book is that I genuinely could not put it down. There was definitely something for everyone here. Perceptions of characters change and people are definitely hiding more than they let on. But one thing is definitely certain, the ending to this book opens up a whole new kind of question. It is fantastic.