The Crooked House
-
-
2.8 • 4 Ratings
-
-
- $9.99
Publisher Description
One fateful night. One unthinkable family tragedy. One survivor. This is Alison's story.
Perfect for fans of The Girl on the Train and Apple Tree Yard, this stunning psychological thriller from the author of The Loving Husband follows one woman's search for the truth about her family history.
Alison is as close to anonymous as she can get: with no ties and a backroom job, hers is a life lived under the radar. But once Alison was someone else: once she was Esme, a teenager whose bedroom sat at the top of a remote house on a bleak estuary. A girl whose family, if not happy, exactly, was no unhappier than anyone else's - or so she thought.
Then one night violence was unleashed in the crooked house, in a nightmare that only Alison survived and from which she's been running ever since. Only when she falls for the charismatic Paul does Alison realise that to have any chance of happiness, she must return to her old life and face a closed community full of dark secrets.
As she seeks to uncover the truth of what happened that terrible night, Alison begins to question everything she thought she knew. Is there anyone she can trust?
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this haunting if flawed standalone from British author Kent (A Florentine Revenge), the former Esme Grace, now living in London under a new legal identity as Alison, is slowly building the semblance of a normal life. Somehow, she has managed to survive the slaughter of her family when she was 14 in the Essex village of Saltleigh but now a promising romance forces her back to the village. Though awakening the traumatic memories she has struggled so long to repress is the last thing Alison wants, she fears that if she refuses to accompany her older lover, Paul Bartlett, to the wedding of Morgan Carter, his former flame, in Saltleigh, the relationship is doomed. Little does Alison realize that much graver dangers await, such as her discovery of evidence that casts a startling new light on her long-ago trauma. This psychological thriller falters down the homestretch under the weight of too many unbelievable plot twists, but until then this is a suspenseful ride with a gutsy heroine.
Customer Reviews
Be warned, this one's tough to sort out
Exhausting, sums up this book for me. Implausible, as well. And unnecessarily complicated, to make everything else worse. Yes, there's a mystery to be uncovered, maybe, but I had a very difficult time caring about the mystery. The writing tries too hard to be vague, and the bits and pieces of clues made absolutely no sense to me. Right up to the ending, I didn't know what was really happening, or what any of the motivations actually were. The ending felt forced and weak, as a result. Be warned. It's a very simple book to read, it's not difficult language, but if you're like me, you still may find yourself having to read disjointed paragraphs over and over just to sort out what is being said. I don't think I'll ever know. And I actually don't really care now.