Thanks to NetGalley and Orion for my copy of this book for review and my place on the blog tour.
From the Publisher:
We’re best friends.
We trust each other.
But…
We are all liars.
Allie, Stacie, Diana, Emily and Gail have been by each other’s sides for as long as they can remember. The Fierce Five. Best friends forever. But growing up has meant growing apart. And little white lies have grown into devastating secrets.
When Gail invites the increasingly estranged friends to reunite at her Scottish cabin, it could be the opportunity to mend old wounds and heal the cracks in their friendship. But when a freak snowstorm rocks the cabin and one of the girls is found dead on the ice, their weekend away becomes a race against time – and each other – to get off the mountain alive.
And in the end, whose story can you trust, when everything was founded on lies to begin with?
A rip-roaring psychological thriller with a twist you won’t see coming – perfect for fans of Lucy Foley’s The Hunting Party and Ruth Ware’s In A Dark, Dark Wood…
My Review:
This one intrigued me from the start – the idea of a group of friends with a whole host of secrets between them. I couldn’t wait to read about Allie, Gail, Diana, Stacey and Emily – young women in their thirties whose lives have gone in different directions, but who are bound by their shared past.
When Gail invites the friends to her Scottish cabin for her birthday celebrations, they envisage a chance to catch up and spend some time together. They don’t, however, foresee the storm that puts them in peril and pits them against each other for survival…
As expected, this is a tense and exciting thriller. The twists and uncovered secrets keep coming and the reader – like Allie, the main narrator – is never quite sure who to trust. The plotting is cleverly paced, although the second half of the book definitely steps up a gear and is more engaging. There is no way I could have predicted the ending – but I’m not sure how I feel about it even now!
The setting of a remote Scottish cabin on a mountain is well chosen – especially when it becomes cut off by the storm and the reader is thrown into a Christie-esque ‘And Then There Were None’ situation. There’s real danger in the brutal conditions and it kept me turning the pages to see how it ended.
The characters are mostly quite unlikeable, but I think that is intentional and important to the story. My biggest issue is why on earth this group would choose to stick together given their traumatic pasts and the fact they don’t seem to like each other very much. It works for the story but in real life I’d have wanted to be as far away from the Fierce Five’s toxic friendship as possible!
I’d recommend this tense and twisty thriller for fans of Lucy Foley and Ruth Ware. This is my first book by Carys Jones and I’d be interested to read more. Overall, it is an engaging and lively read about a circle of friends bound together for all the worst reasons.
About the Author:
Carys Jones is a thriller writer based in Shropshire where she lives with her husband, daughter and dog.
When she’s not writing she can often be found indulging two of her greatest passions – either walking round the local woodland or catching up on all things Disney related.
For more information about Carys please visit www.carys-jones.com or follow her on Twitter @CarysJAuthor
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