The Poison Tree
A Novel
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4.0 • 329 Ratings
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- $4.99
Publisher Description
From an incredible new voice in psychological suspense, a novel about the secrets that remain after a final bohemian summer of excess turns deadly.
This taut psychological thriller begins when Karen and her nine-year- old daughter, Alice, pick up Rex from a ten-year stint in prison for murder. Flash back to the sultry summer in 1990s London when Karen, a straight-A student on the verge of college graduation, first meets the exotic, flamboyant Biba and joins her louche life in a crumbling mansion in Highgate. She begins a relationship with Biba's enigmatic and protective older brother, Rex, and falls into a blissful rhythm of sex, alcohol, and endless summer nights. Naïvely, Karen assumes her newfound happiness will last forever. But Biba and Rex have a complicated family history-one of abandonment, suicide, and crippling guilt-and Karen's summer of freedom is about to end in blood.
When old ghosts come back to destroy the life it has taken Karen a decade to build, she has everything to lose. She will do whatever it takes to protect her family and keep her secret. Alternating between the fragile present and the lingering past with a shocker of an ending, The Poison Tree is a brilliant suspense debut that will appeal to readers of Kate Atkinson, Donna Tartt, and Tana French.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
British author Kelly deftly weaves past and present in her highly satisfying debut novel of psychological suspense, which reveals how a convicted murderer came to be released after serving 10 years in prison. In 1993, the na ve yet brilliant Karen receives a scholarship to London's Queen Charlotte's College, where she's beguiled by Biba Capel, an iconoclastic and edgy drama student, who soon introduces Karen to her strange older brother, Rex. Karen joins sister and brother at the grand but deteriorating Capel family house in Highgate, with its several unconventional tenants. The three throw disorderly parties that enrage the neighbors, but they succeed in creating their own Edenic existence until the unwanted intrusion of Biba's hostile lover. Though melodrama looms, including a double homicide, the tension never wanes, and the ensuing horror comes as a major shock. The surprises don't end until the last page of this twisted tale with its wonderfully evocative London atmosphere. 5-city author tour.
Customer Reviews
great read
Starts slow but is utterly captivating.
Tripe.
A book that drags from beginning to end, and the ending is predictable to anyone with two brain cells to rub together. Certainly not very generous to the female gender who are depicted as catty (Karen's flat mates) not very useful in the overall scheme of things, and worst of all downright murderous. Meanwhile the main male character (Rex) is so noble as to spend years in prison for murders he didn't even commit in order to protect his self absorbed, neurotic, Bohemian and often irresponsible sister. Everybody is enabling everybody else's character flaws but somehow Rex comes off as the ultimate self-sacrificing quasi hero while the women (Karen & Biba) devolve into women that only a psychoanalyst would want anything to do with. Literary tripe.
Another GREAT ONE!
This was another wonderful book by Erin Kelly....Her character development is so thought out that the characters become completely visible. I am excited to continue to read every book that she has written! Keep writing these hard to put down psychological thrillers...We fans want more!