Published July 18th, 2024 by Bantam
Thriller, Mystery, Crime Fiction, Psychological Thriller, Suspense, Domestic Fiction
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ABOUT THE BOOK:
Nothing ever happens in sleepy little Fairhill.
The teenagers get their kicks telling ghost stories in the old graveyard. The parents trust their kids will arrive home safe from school. Everyone knows everyone. Curtains rarely twitch. Front doors are left unlocked.
But this morning all of that will change.
Because Diana Brewer isn’t lying safely in her bed where she belongs. Instead she lies in a hayfield, circled by vultures, discovered by a local farmer.
How quickly a girl becomes a ghost. How quickly a town of friendly, familiar faces becomes a town of suspects, a place of fear and paranoia.
Someone in Fairhill did this. Everyone wants answers.
And one innocent question could be deadly.
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MY REVIEW:
Nothing ever happens in the small, quiet town of Fairhill in Vermont. Not until the morning when a farmer finds the body of a teenage girl in his field. She has been brutally murdered and her eyes gouged out and stomach ripped open by vultures. It’s a gruesome sight and as news spreads through the town it sends shockwaves through the residents. She is identified as Diana Brewer and someone in Fairhill savagely murdered her.The whole town wants answers but there is one person who is trying to evade the truth coming to light. Who? And why did they kill her?
Shari Lapena is one of my favourite thriller authors and this was another first-class thriller. Suspenseful, cryptic, twisty and addictive, it got under my skin and Shari held me in her thrall from the first page. Her writing is razor-sharp, her pacing perfect, and the story is filled with clever clues and misdirection that kept me on my toes. I was completely hooked and inhaled this book, staying up far too late to finish it as I had to know who had killed Diana.
I love books set in a small town because they inspire a false sense of security and safety where everyone knows everyone. But after a crime they begin to realise that maybe they don’t know at least one of their neighbours as well as they thought and paranoia and suspicion sweeps through the town. There is also a real sense of danger that the claustrophobia of the town only intensifies.
There is a large cast of characters, many of whom also narrate the story. But my favourite narrator was Diana herself, who narrates from beyond the grave. It gave me The Lovely Bones vibes but, unlike that book, Diana has no idea who her killer is and is trying to solve her murder alongside the reader. But this wasn’t an easy book to predict. So many people were acting sketchy and I found myself vacillating between possible culprits. But over time things began to come back to Diana, adding to the tension and narrowing the list of suspects. It’s so well done that I only settled on a suspect moments before the big reveal.
A must-read for all thriller lovers.
Rating: ✮✮✮✮✰
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Shari Lapena is the #1 internationally bestselling author of ten suspense novels including The Couple Next Door, A Stranger in the House, An Unwanted Guest, Someone We Know, The End of Her, Not a Happy Family, Everyone Here is Lying, What Have You Done?, She Didn’t See It Coming, and Getting Away With Murder.
A former lawyer and English teacher, Shari now writes full time from a farm in Ontario, where she lives with her husband.
Her first thriller, The Couple Next Door, was a runaway global bestseller, selling 4 million copies worldwide. It was WHSmith’s “Book of the Year” in 2016 and the #1 Adult Fiction Title in the UK for 2017. All of Shari’s thrillers have been New York Times, UK Sunday Times, and Globe and Mail bestsellers. Four of her books have been Richard & Judy Book Club Picks. Her books have sold into forty territories around the world and have been optioned for film and TV.
She doesn’t want you to be able to put her books down.
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Thanks for reading, Bibliiophiles xxxx
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