Thanks to Rosie at Headline for my copy of this tense thriller! As always, opinions are entirely my own.
I loved the premise for this book! A murder at midnight on Hogmanay in Edinburgh – we know there’s a body right from the start. But whose is it? And why has this New Year’s Eve party led to murder?
The structure of the book pulled me in right from the start – we begin with the body and (in chapters dotted through the novel) see its discovery, recovery from its resting place and subsequent ‘story’ from the different perspectives of various observers. This really adds to the tension and mystery as its identity is cleverly concealed while the lead-up to the crime is explained.
The back-story to the death is one of friendship, particularly between Sylvie (our main narrator for a lot of the book) and Tess. The story takes us back to their shared past and hidden secrets before bringing us up to the present day – where Sylvie is a successful lawyer in a new relationship and her life seems to be on the up. When Tess’ life takes a tragic turn, Sylvie is called upon to help – but what is she prepared to do?
I did find that I raced through this book because I needed to know the answers to the million questions it throws out. Who is dead? Why? What has the past to do with the present? Who can I trust? How on earth are those plot strands going to come together?! It works well, chucking in plenty of twists along the way and coming to a (mostly) satisfying conclusion.
Writing about the book is incredibly difficult without giving spoilers, so I’ll just say that this is well worth a read. Despite the fact that a lot of the characters were quite unlikeable, I was sold on the premise and the way that Tyce gives us a tense unravelling of the truth throughout the novel. Even as I neared the final chapters, I didn’t know what to expect and wasn’t disappointed.
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Header photo by Anne Nygård on Unsplash
