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Incredibly engrossing – I pretty much read this one straight through. From the totally gripping introduction, through the twists and turns that fooled me (not once, but twice!), all the way to the climactic and satisfying ending, this is a great read that will see you through an afternoon, or a weekend (one that will seem, ironically, impossibly short!)
Jayne, Ruth and Emily, three women married to husbands who are lifelong best friends, travel to a remote rental for a long weekend, – the first evening of which will be spent without their mates. The rental, Dark Fell Barn, perched on the remotest of the black moorlands of Northumbria, is straight out of Wuthering Heights, with a gothically sinister atmosphere aided by the colossal wind and rainstorm they find themselves entrenched in at the tail end of their journey.
Without giving any more than the book jacket version of the plot away (no spoilers here), the weekend takes an unexpectedly terrifying turn when the women are presented with an anonymous letter – a taunting missile vowing that the weekend’s activities will include the murder of one of the husbands. Missing from the group, the queen-bee widow of a recently deceased fourth buddy, is the instant suspect – a woman who not only has each of the men completely bedazzled and wrapped around her fingers, but may be as fiendishly machiavellian as she is enchanting.
An almost crazy kaleidoscope of suspense is quickly set off, peppering the storyline (and it’s horrified protagonists) with events, threats, clues and red-herrings that take no time at all to build to a compulsively readable crescendo, that quite frankly, never lets up.
I loved this book, and this strange and perhaps unhealthily-close-knit group it is populated with – “a group too dysfunctional to know the meaning of friendship” – and wonderfully difficult to pick apart. If you are at all like this reader, (and I would venture to guess you are!), unpacking this group of friends, trying to get to the bottom of the personalities, motivations, and secrets they each hold, was such great fun that I had an impossible time putting the book down.
A wonderful read, this book is highly recommended for anyone who enjoys suspense, a devilishly clever plot, and characters so deviously drawn that it will take your best efforts to get inside them.
A great big thank you to @Harpercollinsca for an ARC of this #BooksofHCC. All thoughts presented are my own.
#TheLongWeekend by @GillyMacmillan
*** This title will be released on March 29, 2022
