Pages: 334
Published: 2nd April 2020
Genre: Domestic thriller
Content warnings: Domestic violence, blackmail, missing person sub-plot
Ursula, Gareth and Alice have never met before.
Ursula thinks she killed the love of her life.
Gareth’s been receiving strange postcards.
And Alice is being stalked.
None of them are used to relying on others – but when the three strangers’ lives unexpectedly collide, there’s only one thing for it: they have to stick together. Otherwise, one of them will die.
Three strangers, two secrets, one terrifying evening.
The world of novels and literature is a magical thing with endless amounts of potential. The beauty is that you can write about anything, either in the real world or places born out of imagination, from pure escapism to the downright gritty and everything in between. Still, it is hard to understand why an author would devote time to a story as mundane as this one.
Before we go any further, there are some good bits. The themes – especially the portrayal of domestic violence – is hard-hitting and well explored while there is great craft in a narrative that sees three unrelated characters’ lives overlap in subtle ways before they all come together for a climactic final scene, but as a whole there is surprisingly little to get excited about.
From this author we are accustomed to seeing sinister plots with unreliable narrators and there is definitely an element of that here, minus the usual fast pace and, more problematically, any real intrigue. It does drag at times and it takes us from one average situation to the next, with most of the mysterious moments proving all too fleeting.
Whether you connect with all of the three main characters probably depends on whether you can relate to them. I found Gareth’s chapters boring to read and Ursula’s not much better despite her occasional encounters with a vulnerable customer, but other readers may identify more with their circumstances. Alice’s chapters were marginally more interesting, yet not hugely compelling either.
The useful thing about Alice is that as the reader, you are given something to latch on to right from the very beginning, with her scene in the bar where her date is much too forthcoming. But so much of what comes after that is just plain weird, with a mystery that serves up some curious questions though comes across more contrived than anything else.
While I was not particularly taken with Ursula, she is probably the most layered of the three main protagonists. She is a little bit wayward, being a shoplifter and finding herself in dire financial straits. In addition to that, she rubs people the wrong way by frankly being extremely nosey, but underneath it all she does have compassion and looks out for others, which partly makes up for her lack of tact.
A lot of the action revolves around the main central setting of a shopping centre, to which all three characters has a connection. Alice is the manager of a clothing store where Ursula is often caught stealing, and Gareth is a security guard. That is about as unexciting as it sounds. The one place where the author does nail the atmosphere is at Michael’s house, which has an eerie sense of foreboding straight away that makes you convinced Ursula is lodging in the home of a serial killer.
Every now and then the plot darkens with news of young men disappearing on the harbourside, a haunting image that the story fails to capitalise upon. There is nothing for you to truly connect with here and most of this just seems for effect. Even when Gareth finds himself interviewed by police, it is hard to take it very seriously. Then we have the ending, where some of the strands are intelligently tied together, but it all gets just a bit too silly.
Overall, this book undoubtedly puts the ‘domestic’ into domestic thriller. The crossover between the three characters is well conceived and quite neatly executed, yet apart from a strong domestic violence sub-plot there is nothing to lift it from its exceptional ordinariness. As a reader you want authors to bold and adventurous and use imagination even when a story is set squarely in the real world, but this one falls short in that respect.
I might have just been in a bad mood while reading this book if my review is anything to go by! But honestly, the problem was that although you could rarely complain that nothing was happening in this story, the premise was just dull and uninspiring.
My rating: ⭐⭐
Stephen Reads Books 