It’s been a long time since I’ve read anything by Jo Spain and this book has been sitting on my shelf for a fair while. I knew however, that it would be a book I would enjoy. I began reading it last night (11/06/20) and had to remind myself that I needed to stop reading and go to sleep! I’d read about a third of the book and it was already 11pm! That’s the mark of a good book in my eyes.

Spain is one of the few authors who use multiple p.o.v’s which don’t leave me feeling confused and muddled. All p.o.v’s have clear and distinct voices and it is very easy to follow along with what is happening.

A lot of what I would usually put into this section I will leave out because the characters play such an important part of the story that talking about them in great detail would ruin the book for any potential readers.

I’ll talk a little about Olive, who is essentially the main character of the book. I wasn’t sure at first, how I as supposed to think of Olive and whether I should be swayed by character opinions of her. She seemed like a perfectly functioning character that had many sides to her personality. I found her to be rather interesting in a ‘curiosity killed the cat’ kind of way and wished that I had more knowledge on her, especially concerning her younger self.

It must have been very hard for her to start off living in her remote cottage to suddenly find herself surrounded by big expensive builds and a gated community. I understood her struggles and her feelings, even if I didn’t condone her actions.

This was easy to visualise, the characters are very prominent, more detailed than the scenes, but I found myself very focused on what I was reading, and I was able to visualise the book clearly.

I was impressed with this book and the scale in which I was continually misdirected away from the truth of what happened. Each character had a detailed story to tell and those stories perfectly matched the characters I was learning about. Even the investigating police officers, Frank and Emma, had detailed backstories and were made as important to the story as the suspects.

I was a big fan of Spain’s work anyway, so I had been eagerly anticipating reading this book. It didn’t disappoint in anyway and when the reveal came, I found myself silently berating my mind for not thinking it as a possibility.

It took me less than 2 days to read this and it was a book that I struggled to put down. I loved the twists and the turns and how the book focused more on the interaction of characters than the scene itself or Olive’s life. It was interesting to learn how all the different aspects were actually linked together to create one story. The focus of this book centers around not knowing everything that goes on with your neighbours behind their closed doors and it is definitely a book that makes you think about human interaction and how your own actions may be seen by another person.