This is Dandy Smith’s third novel and the third thing I’ve read by her. For the most part, I’ve enjoyed all of them so far, but this one has been my favourite overall. With the other two, my feelings were slightly mixed because of the fact that practically every character had a pretty mean, toxic streak – but this time, while the characters did have flaws, they all felt a lot more sympathetic to me.
So the story is about these two sisters who are the best friends in the whole world (a common theme in these books). Sadly, in the middle of the night one of them is kidnapped and never seen again… well, until about fifteen years later when she suddenly turns up again. The only problem is, she acts kind of off and refuses to share much information about what exactly happened during her time away. As more time goes by, more and more fishy things start happening.
The concept of a child abductee coming back as an adult and being very guarded about what happened in the interim is one I think is pretty cool for the premise of a novel. Meanwhile, the central “mystery” was one I felt quite invested in, and enjoyed getting extra little pieces of information and trying to figure out exactly what was going on.
There are actually two narratives happening at once though – the other deals with a brother-sister duo who are strongly implied to be incestuous and who live in a large family home under the thumb of an oppressive uncle. As I’m sure you can imagine, the two stories eventually intertwine (and not in the way I expected), but for a lot of the novel I was disappointed whenever it jumped back to this thread – especially as there’d be an interesting cliff-hanger in the other plotline, and then we’d have to return to these two. These sections are also written in the third person, rather than first (like the rest) which is mildly disorientating. They are good, for sure, but less good than the main bits.
Overall, any issues I have with the secondary storyline are relatively minor because the pay-off with how they fit together is pretty cool. I did find the incestuous insinuations to be a little gratuitous though. There were also bits along the way where I thought “Hang on, that doesn’t make any sense” only for it later to be revealed that I was absolutely right to notice that, and it was part of the story – which felt like problems at the time, but in the end, it was just clever writing.
If you liked One Small Mistake and The Perfect Match, then chances are you’ll probably like this one too. It’s a decent thriller novel and one where you’ll find yourself keen to pick up and more clues and pieces of information in each chapter. It’s a slower novel than the other two, but it feels more carefully thought out and developed. I think it’s the author’s best work yet, and I hope that this upward trajectory continues into the next book.
Rating: 8.4/10
