Tuesday 13 March 2018

Book Review: OUR HOUSE by Louise Candlish


Title: Our House
Author: Louise Candlish
Publisher: Simon & Schuster (Australia)
Read: March 2018
Expected publication: 1 April 2018
My Rating:๐ŸŒŸ๐ŸŒŸ๐ŸŒŸ๐ŸŒŸ1/2


Book Description:

When Fiona Lawson comes home to find strangers moving into her house, she's sure there's been a mistake. She and her estranged husband, Bram, have a modern co-parenting arrangement: bird's nest custody, where each parent spends a few nights a week with their two sons at the prized family home to maintain stability for their children. But the system built to protect their family ends up putting them in terrible jeopardy. In a domino effect of crimes and misdemeanors, the nest comes tumbling down.

Now Bram has disappeared and so have Fiona's children. As events spiral well beyond her control, Fiona will discover just how many lies her husband was weaving and how little they truly knew each other. But Bram's not the only one with things to hide, and some secrets are best kept to oneself, safe as houses.

My musings:

My favourite genre is mystery / suspense, but it is getting harder and harder to find an original story that hasn’t been done before in varying shades of grey. So picture my excitement when I stumbled across the blurb of Our House on Netgalley, it sounded so intriguing! Imagine coming home from a weekend away to find that your home has been stripped of all your possessions and strangers are moving in, claiming that they have legitimately purchased the house. How is this possible? And who could have done it? This is the situation Fiona finds herself in when returning from a romantic getaway with a new boyfriend, leaving her ex-husband minding her house and her kids. Scary, huh?

If you think the premise sounds a bit outlandish, don’t worry, because Louise Candlish writes her story with such conviction and lays such a solid foundation that you will think twice about ever leaving your house again! I loved her writing style, which incorporates a “transcript” from a live true crime podcast (in which Fiona tells her side of the story) and a document in which Bram, her estranged husband, confesses his part in the events that unfold. Incorporating social media has become a popular feature in contemporary crime fiction, seeing how it plays such a big part in most of our lives, and Candlish uses this to its full potential. What ensues is a she said / he said type of story that is chilling and ingenious in equal measures.

Have you ever read a book in which one of the main characters makes one bad decision, and that little flutter of butterfly wings soon turns into a huge shitstorm of epic proportion that will alter everyone’s lives? I love those stories, even though at times they make me cringe in horror at the avalanche that is building momentum as you frantically turn the pages. Candlish proves that immense suspense can be built through putting her characters in everyday situations each and every one of us may find ourselves in during the course of our lives. Here we have a couple with small children, who try to work out their marriage problems amicably for the sake of their two sons. I marvelled at the concept of bird’s nest parenting, a shared custody arrangement of separated couples where parents take turns living in the family home where their children live 100% of the time. Sounds good in theory, and I can imagine that it is a good solution for the children involved (if it works). But is it really possible to pull it off successfully? This is a suspense novel, so of course things soon start to go wrong – and escalate with the speed of a runaway train headed for an abyss, building tension and dread as the story speeds along.

The most difficult thing in selling a contemporary mystery is often character development, and Candlish excels in that department, Although I am far from the suburban housewife Fiona is portrayed as, I could easily put myself in her shoes and constantly questioned myself how I would react. I felt her confusion and her pain, and marvelled at her constant optimism and trust in the most dire of circumstances. Even Bram, with the part he plays in the whole situation, was a likeable – if flawed – character, caught up in a terrible situation. Our House is one of those books that made me wonder why I had not discovered this author before, but feeling immensely glad that I now have.
  
Summary:

Our House is a gripping, modern-day domestic-noir mystery built around a unique premise that had me totally enthralled from start to finish. I thoroughly enjoyed it, even though it cost me hours of sleep as I read deep into the night unable to put the book down. Highly recommended if you’re a lover of the genre or just looking for a cracking good read! 


Thank you to Netgalley and Simon & Schuster Australia for the free electronic copy of this novel and for giving me the opportunity to provide an honest review.




No comments:

Post a Comment