Happy Hump Day All!
Excited to share with you today my review for this intriguing story that completely fascinated me! 🌻
My Thoughts
enthralling, atmospheric, chilling, unsettling, and eye-opening!
Erin Kelly has crafted a compelling story that starts with a whisper and ends with a shout. This is a slow burner that becomes more and more riveting as the story progresses. The story was cleverly constructed, Creating a constant air of mystery, and a continuous need to know. A story about living a life always fearing that the truth will come out. An institution that meant different things to different people. A real and raw look at Women and mental health throughout history.
The story jumps around in time and is told from multiple perspectives. The book opens with Marianne returning home to help care for her ailing mother. Her loving husband has a surprise for her, A luxury apartment to stay in rather than camping out on her sister’s couch. The thing is the apartment is located in a renovated mental hospital, The place where all Mariann’s secrets are buried. Home also comes with the risk of running into her ex-boyfriend Jessie who is still bitter and blames her for the past. The story then bounces back in time to 1988 where we learn what Marianne and Jessie were up to. Then we jump back even further to 1958 where we meet a young Helen. I felt structuring the story this way was tremendously impactful. We got to meet the characters and then we got to understand why they were the way they were and what their motivations were.
I found all these characters compelling, but I have to admit I found Helen’s story the most intriguing. The treatment of women who did not conform in the 1950s and earlier, in both the UK and the US was disgusting and disturbing. You really got to know and understand all these characters perspectives. They all wanted different things for different reasons and a lot of these things were conflicting, but I completely understood where each of them was coming from. Didn’t always agree with their actions, but I understood their motivations.
This was an extremely well done, genre defying book that I won’t soon forget!
🎧🎧🎧 this audiobook was narrated by three different narrator’s. Giving each character their own unique voice. I thought each narrator did a really good job. I need to give major props to whoever narrated Marianne she did an amazing Jessie voice. I think the English accents especially the regional accents really added to the overall atmosphere of this book.
*** many thanks to Minotaur Books and MacMillan Audio for my copy of this book ***
About the Book
Erin Kelly, the masterful author of He Said/She Said, delivers another intense, irresistible audiobook of psychological suspense.
You can’t keep the secret.
You can’t tell the truth.
You can’t escape the past….
Marianne was 17 when she fled her home in Nusstead – leaving behind her family, her boyfriend, Jesse, and the body they buried. Now, 30 years later, forced to return to in order to help care for her sick mother, she can feel the past closing around her. And Jesse, who never forgave her for leaving in the first place, is finally threatening to expose the truth.
Marianne will do anything to protect the life she’s built, the husband and daughter who must never know what happened all those years ago. Even if it means turning to her worst enemy for help…. But Marianne may not know the whole story – and she isn’t the only one with secrets they’d kill to keep.
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