Rating: 5/5
Review:
An excellent psychological thriller
I thought this was an excellent psychological thriller. I wasn't sure about it from the description,
but it grabbed me from the start and never let me go.
The book is narrated by 15-year-old Mille, who, in the first
couple of pages, finally turns her monstrously abusive and murderous mother in
to the police. We get Millie's account
of her fostering by a psychologist, his wife and daughter who is Millie's age
and who give her a home in the lead-up to her mother's trial. The story emerges gradually and very
skilfully and I wouldn't want to know much more than that before I began the
book. There are a lot of
familiar-sounding tropes here: damaged teenage girl, bitchy, bullying
schoolmates, survivor guilt and so on, but Ali Land does it all so well that it
felt fresh, and the story holds some significant surprises.
Millie's voice is excellently done, so that the whole thing
is very readable and I was utterly gripped by it. I thought it was an exciting,
intelligent read and I can recommend it very warmly.
(I received an ARC via Netgalley.)
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