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• I purchased this novel just going by the strength on some of its earlier reviews and I have to say that I'm very glad I did. I'm on a bit of a psychological thriller kick at the moment and this was an excellent piece of fiction that I became absorbed in, very quickly. For me, a good thriller has to be intense and really hold the readers attention and I found this utterly compelling, able to visualise everything that was going on, from the characters to the settings.The novel follows forty-something Sonia, who one day opens the door to find fifteen-year-old Jez on her doorstep, there to borrow an album, promised to him by Sonia's husband. Chillingly, Sonia then decides that she is not going to let Jez leave and imprisons him in her home, hiding him from the world. At the same time, the book alludes to traumatic events that happened to Sonia years previously, something to do with the haunting river on which she still lives...This was a book of great depths, encompassing a lot of issues including family rivalries, breaking marriages and childhood traumas, though it never felt clunky or overdone, with convincing dialogue and just the right pace to keep the reader interested with a few little twists and turns.I personally felt that this novel worked so well because of how everything was unravelled so slowly with only vague hints to Sonia's past as well as how she tries to keep such a sense of normality about things in the present, despite knowing what she had done/was doing. It adds a sense of eerie believability to things as well as a heightened sense of anticipation from the reader. Also, as the reader sees a lot of the story in Sonia's own narrative, they obviously understand that she is a very unhinged individual, making her all the more frightening because you cannot perceive how she is going to act next. She clearly knows that what she is doing is wrong, but tries to justify her actions on a very disturbed level. I have to say that despite her wrongs, I did feel for her- she is clearly mentally ill and I think the author also manages to illicit some degree of sympathy for what she has been through, which is no mean feat. She is a very complex character and therefore a really memorable protagonist- because she comes across as an ordinary, every day lady, especially in how she appears to the outside world (think Kathy Bates in `Misery').I have deducted a star, merely because I found the way Aunt Helen's character was represented to be a bit irritating and she grated on me a bit. She was completely self-absorbed and I did not like her at all. Overall though, this was a very well written psychological thriller made all the more exciting by the fact that this is only a debut novel. I genuinely can't wait to see what Hancock comes up with next and I really appreciated how unlike a lot of thrillers, she did look at the psychological motivation as to why her characters did the things they did.Highly recommended- make sure you don't miss this. *This review also appears on Amazon.co.uk*

  4.00 out of 5

  CookieDemon

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