S. K. Tremayne

The Ice Twins is downright atmospheric. It's a brilliant and haunting psychological thriller that was near impossible to put down. With so many twists and turns you never quite know what's going to happen next.
The narrative alternates between Sarah and Angus. You witness Sarah slowly begin to unravel while Angus is stewing in anger. It's obvious he knows something she doesn't and early on it becomes clear her wants her to suffer..you just don't know why. Meanwhile you have the whole show more Kirstie/Lydia identity crisis which at times (okay, most of the time) gave off a sinister feel.

"Mummy, why do you keep calling me Kirstie?'
I say nothing. The silence is ringing. I speak:
'Sorry, sweetheart. What?'
'Why do you keep calling me Kirstie, Mummy? Kirstie is dead. It was Kirstie that died. I'm Lydia."

The description of the harsh weather and the rundown, desolate cottage really adds to the ominous/chilling vibe of the story. The Ice Twins is a definite must read. show less

Sarah and Angus are parents to monozygotic twins, Kristie and Lydia, the most identical of twins. Tragically, one of the twins falls to her death from a high balcony when the twins are six years old. The assumption is that the deceased twin is Lydia. Their parents have always had trouble telling them apart, but the living twin assures them it is Lydia lying dead on the ground.

In an effort to escape their grief, Sarah, Angus and Kirstie move to a very remote island in Scotland once owned by show more Fergus' family. This is when things become sinister with Kirstie now claiming to be Lydia as her parents' marriage crumbles and she sees the ghostly appearance of her dead sister. The atmosphere of the island is beautiful and yet chilling. It contributes to the unsettling premise. show less

With so many thrillers out on the market these days, a good one needs to be able to set itself apart from the masses. S. K. Tremayne’s approach is to take the idea of an unreliable narrator and add to it. In addition, he sets his novels in areas of the world that have tragic histories. With the atmosphere and mood set by the background and his upfront approach to unreliable narrators, he then must use the story itself to keep a reader’s interest and build the suspense. With The Fire show more Child, he succeeds in spades.

Tragedy abounds within the setting of The Fire Child, and Mr. Tremayne uses that tragedy to good advantage. Set among the ruins of the tin mines in Cornwall, Mr. Tremayne weaves its miserable history into the very fabric of the story. These mines and everything they represent in terms of human misery and abominable working conditions are a shadowy character that haunts the Carnhallow House and its occupants. Their ruins echo the human ruins they created, and the stories Rachel learns about the mines are more than a little grim. The pall they cast on the house is palpable and sets the bleakest of moods. Mr. Tremayne only adds to that pall as he establishes David’s relationship with his father and with his 1,000-year-old family past.

One of the best parts about the novel is the fact that Mr. Tremayne lets readers know from the very beginning that Rachel is not the most reliable of narrators. We find out very early on that she is keeping secrets from her husband, and the novel is not even at its halfway point before we learn what some of those secrets are. Knowing this so early into the story allows readers to let the story flow without having to worry about her trustworthiness. It even creates more suspense as we are left to wonder just who we can believe as things start spiraling out of control.

Things do spiral out of control and rather quickly. This brings to the story an inordinate amount of excitement as Rachel and David’s idyllic marriage is frankly somewhat nauseating to behold. They are proof that happiness is boring in a novel and that tension and strife are where the best stories occur. As things deteriorate, the reader should do nothing but hang on for the ride. To try to puzzle out the story’s trajectory is to miss the way Mr. Tremayne weaves doubt and madness into every scene.

The Fire Child is exciting and intense, but there is an undercurrent of sadness and regret to it that may surprise readers. This is in part due to the fact that Mr. Tremayne includes the history of the tin mines into as many scenes as possible, and the history is not pleasant. Grief is at the heart of the story, and it permeates all of the characters and their actions. The story is as tumultuous as the Cornwall beaches and weather, and it makes for outstanding reading. show less

This Book is Bonkers

(Full disclosure: I received a free electronic ARC for review through NetGalley. Trigger warning for rape and violence, including rough sex.)

"Mummy, why do you keep calling me Kirstie?"

I say nothing. The silence is ringing. I speak:

"Sorry, sweetheart. What?"

"Why do you keep calling me Kirstie, Mummy? Kirstie is dead. It was Kirstie that died. I'm Lydia."

###

It's been thirteen months since Sarah's six-year-old daughter Lydia - one half of the "Ice Twins" - died in a tragic show more fall from her parents' first-floor balcony in Devon. In the wake of the accident, the family all but fell apart: Sarah spiraled into a morass of grief and guilt - for it was she who was supposed to be watching the girls that fateful night - while her husband Angus found solace in the bottom of a whiskey bottle. An angry, sometimes-violent drunk like his father, Angus eventually was fired from his architecture job after assaulting his boss in an alcohol-fueled rage.

And the remaining daughter Kirstie? Well, she's adrift without her other half. Best friends and then some, Kirstie and Lydia lived in their own little world. They had their own secret language and elaborate in-jokes, and in the months leading up to the accident, their identities had become so intertwined that they often dressed alike, swapped personas, and referred to themselves as a single entity, e.g., "Mummy, come and sit between me so you can read to us." Now that Lydia's gone, Kirstie is an island: alone, apart, desolate.

So what could be better than relocating Kirstie to an actual island? (Yes, that was sarcasm. Sarah and Angus are the worst.)

No longer able to afford their upper-middle-class lifestyle, the Moorcrofts decide to move to the ancient cottage under the lighthouse on Eilean Torran - Thunder Island - willed to Angus and his brother by their recently deceased grandmother. Though it's been years since he vacationed there, Angus has fond (more like "idealized") memories of the place. After much research - online, because visiting the place beforehand is just too much - Sarah decides that the change of scenery might do the family - and Kirstie especially - a world of good. A clean slate.

There's just one problem with this: the Moorcrofts remain the Moorcrofts no matter where they hang their North Face anoraks.

Oh, and it's rumored that Torron Island is haunted: a place where the boundaries between worlds is thin, and spirits sometimes slip through.

Unsurprisingly, Kirstie continues to devolve in this harsh, desolate - yet painfully beautiful - environment. Before long, she drops a bomb on Sarah: Kirstie isn't Kirstie, but rather Lydia, the twin taken for dead. Yet Kirstie isn't gone, either: a part of her lives on in Lydia, and sometimes that part comes out to play.

With only the surviving twin's spontaneous utterance to go on - "Mummy Mummy come quickly, Lydie-lo has fallen!" - Sarah begins to question her memories of the accident. Could she really have made a mistake? Did they say goodbye to the wrong girl? Might her favorite twin still be alive?

In a word, this book is BONKERS. The Ice Twins is a wicked weird mashup of genres: ghost story, murder mystery, psychological thriller, and (oddly enough) nature writing. Just which genre dominates the scene shifts and slides from one chapter to the next.

Many of the elements - an unreliable narrator, a nefarious ex-/husband, a reality that bends and buckles and refuses to be nailed down - are reminiscent of another 2015 psychological thriller, Paula Hawkins's The Girl on the Train. But there are also shades of The Shining cast here as well; the primitive, disconnected isolation of Torran Island brings to mind the Overlook Hotel; bonus points since both stories take place during the stormy, dreary winter season, where the weather is almost as great of a threat as your murderous, alcoholic husband. Torran Island is a MC unto itself.

Filled with twists and turns, you're really best just sitting back and enjoying the show. As Sarah tries to decipher the truth about what happened thirteen months ago - and in the days since - theories run the gamut and become increasingly over-the-top: adultery, murder, suicide, rape, incest, pedophilia. And of course hauntings: of the house, the island, her daughter. Had I been live-blogging it, my comments would have been a never ending series of WELL THAT ESCALATED QUICKLY gifs.

While Sarah's perspective dominates the story, occasionally the focus shifts to Angus for a one-chapter interjection of sorts. Whereas Sarah narrates in first person, present tense, Angus is written in third person, past tense, for a rather obvious and jarring change. At least until it isn't. Spoilers!

Sarah and Angus are wholly unlikable protagonists, which actually works quite well for the story. (Who wants to read about unicorns and rainbows and Mr. Rogers all the time?) The story does hinge on the old horror trope of sex is evil/punishing women for their sexuality. If I think on it too hard, it is a little irritating; yet on another level I can see how it works in this particular instance. (Which is to say, it wasn't so much the sex as the bad parenting.)

One thing that really irritated me: Tremayne's love affair with colons, which are wildly overused. Then again, I read the ARC; no doubt editors will swoop in and clean this up in the final version.

P.S. Adopt, don't shop!

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