It's the story of a London TV producer who’s retired to Devon to get away from it all is now being terrorized by an unknown someone who offers no name but reveals every fault in the lives of two families, one of them is her own. Another " victim"...an opera singer Alex Colley. While he and his wife slowly move in traffic his wife silently hears in her head... “My name is Justine Merrison and I do "Nothing.” No more early morning meetings, no more dealing with strangers, no more guessing about anything. She doesn't even react with any sense of alarm when Alex teasingly tells her and Ellen, their 14-year-old daughter, that they’ve changed plans and decided to move into a random house he points out on the side of the highway. Noting can disturb her quite selective intensity. Forward...four months: Though, she’s disturbed by a series of calls from a woman she doesn't recognize and who refuses to identify herself, but says she knows why Justine, whom she insists on calling “Sandie,” has moved outside Kingswear. She insists that this "Sandie" go back to London. Ellen seems to have settled into the Beaconwood School. She has written a story about a family whose youngest daughter is a multiple murderer and then becomes a murder victim herself. But Ellen’s "honeymoon" with Beaconwood ends abruptly when her best friend, George Donbavand, is expelled for stealing a coat that she had given him. Things become worse when Justine goes to the school to try to explain that George had been given the coat only to have the head teacher Lesley Griffiths tell her that there ever was a student named Geoge Donbavand. Soon the deepening mystery forces Justine to confront the real reason she had left her old job and her old life in the first place. Plenty of shivery of second sights. Even after the last page ends you won’t soon forget this nightmare within a nightmare. ( )

If only I could give this book negative stars. Stupid, unrealistic, even in the realm of usually unrealistic mystery books. Where do I get 20 hours of my life back? ( )

I can hardly credit I actually finished this, I guess it was mainly because I wanted to refuse to believe anybody (author, editor, publishing house, the whole team of, presumably, professionals who should know better than, and get paid not to, inflict such pure silliness on their audience) could have the brass neck to present their readers with that kind of non-solution to this non-mystery without suspense, plot twist nor, ultimately, sense.

I can suspend disbelief with the best of them, however, a solid basis to get me started (relatable characters carrying out marginally believable actions, a dignus vindice nodus - problem worth solving), is that really too much to ask? It's not even that the writing was terrible, it was OK, even funny in places, it seems more that the author could not be arsed to make the effort to render a half-decent story. What a waste! ( )

A woman's confessional-type narrative interwoven with the macabre story authored (or not?) by her teenage daughter, plus winks and nods to unreliable narrators, locked-room mysteries, and Agatha Christie — maybe not the best resolution but a fun, unputdownable weekend read. ( )

I was a bit disappointed with this one. I have had Sophie Hannah on my radar for a while and this was the first book of hers that I have read. The idea was good but I didn't like any of the characters. Justine just seemed to charge about everywhere swearing her head off; her husband, Alex, travelled a lot as an opera singer and to be honest I didn't notice whether he was there or not most of the time; and her daughter, Ellen, was a bit of a silly sulky teenager.

I struggled with the chapter numbers of the story that Ellen was writing being out of sync with the chapters in the book - I'm odd like that! I did quite like the story that Ellen was writing about the family called the Ingreys - they were much more interesting than the Merrisons. Ellen's story was quite dark at times and gave a Victorian gothic type feel to the book.

The book did get more gripping towards the end as the mysterious Anne Donbavand appears and we approach the final showdown - although I was expecting someone a bit more scary than crazy.

Although I wouldn't particularly recommend this book, I will still look out for some other Sophie Hannah books.

I received this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.
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