This is part of my Summer Reads series where I’ll be sharing book recommendations – a series of “not just cookbooks”.
This week’s Summer Reads pick is from Mark Edwards, an author I discovered in the past year after I read (and loved) his book The Wasp Trap. I’m always a fan of a good thriller with lots of twists and turns I don’t see coming and this did not disappoint!
From the publisher:
A holiday in the Highlands turns into a hostile trap in this vicious thriller about a family who will stop at nothing to keep their dark past buried.
In this family, some secrets are worth killing for.
When Patrick accompanies his girlfriend, Holly Grant, to a remote village in the Scottish Highlands for the holidays, he’s braced for an awkward first meeting with her enigmatic family—not a fight for survival.
But tensions are high among the Grant siblings, all of whom are unsettled by the arrival of their father’s much younger fiancée, Jasmine, who bears an uncanny resemblance to their late mother. As suspicion and paranoia grip the household, Patrick is drawn into a sinister plot involving the Grant family, Jasmine and the frozen corpse of a young man found in a nearby cave.
With the clock ticking towards New Year’s Eve, Patrick finds himself in a den of vipers, unsure of who he can trust and who is poised to strike with lethal precision.
From the mind of Mark Edwards, whom Lisa Jewell says “is in a league of his own,” comes a venomous thriller about the lengths one family will go to conceal their darkest secrets.
Wow – what a read! I loved this and devoured it in a couple of days!
Set in the Scottish Highlands which lends an air of a closed-room mystery, this book is full of atmosphere that really sets the stage for all the drama that unfolds during Patrick’s stay at his girlfriend’s family estate over the Christmas/ New Year period. This is Patrick’s first time meeting Holly’s family who turn out to be incredibly wealthy but the textbook example of money not equalling happiness. Patrick soon discovers the lingering tension between Holly’s family but also other locals both in the present but also in the past.
There’s murder, unreliable narrators, unlikable characters a go-go (but ones you can’t stop reading about), terrible weather, unsolved mysteries from the past and excellent writing. All throughout the book, I felt uncomfortable and uneasy – like someone was spying on me -very unsettling. Edwards’ characters are complicated and complex and, while I didn’t like them much, I felt pretty invested in their stories. Pacing was masterful – it felt like a slow buildup of the tension at the start and then it was a roller coaster from there – non stop twists and turns, many of which I didn’t see coming.
A fabulous read!
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Disclosure: I received an advance digital copy from Penguin Random House Canada in exchange for an honest review. I am not receiving any compensation for reviewing the book. Neither the author nor the publisher reviewed this post prior to publication. All opinions are my own.
Buy One of the Family on Amazon (this affiliate link should bring you to the Amazon store in, or closest to, your country).
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