I can’t honestly don’t know where to start with this one, I have mixed feelings.
In summary, four people enter the dinning room one night: a gay couple Charlie and Matthew and their son Titus, and a woman, Rachel, a complete stranger. Only three people come out alive. Charlie finds himself slumped beside his husband’s body, their son sitting silently at the dinner table, while Rachel calls 999, the bloody knife still gripped in her hand. But is everything what it seems?
Firstly, it’s very well written, and the tone Walter used is engaging and made me want to keep reading.
Secondly, I really enjoyed the characters and how they evolve and slowly reveal their true selves in the novel. They’re all complex and flawed, the all made mistakes, some bigger than others. The different POVs was what made me sympathise with them. More specifically Charlie, the protagonist who tries to have a “perfect” life only to realise just how far from the true that really is. I struggled to under Titus though, and it was hard for me to see him as a pre-teen and not a young adult in midst of his attitude and actions.
Finally, the plot is well thought, and the slow reveal of crucial information kept me reading until the end. However, by knowing from the start who killed who, it was disappointing for me. I would have preferred to have an unknown character confessing in the beginning and try to guess who it was throughout the book. And then that ending… I prefer endings where all the loose ends are tied. Nevertheless, the open ending left me wondering what would happen next. It could potentially become a second book, if that was the authors’ objective.
All in all, a good read.
Thank you NetGalley for the early access to this book.
Book Traveller 