by Alice Feeney
Blurb:
Eden Fox, an artist on the brink of her big break, sets off for a run before her first exhibition. When she returns to the home she recently moved into, Spyglass, an enchanting old house in Hope Falls, nothing is as it should be. Her key doesn’t fit. A woman, eerily similar to her, answers the door. And her husband insists that the stranger is his wife.One house. One husband. Two women. Someone is lying.Six months earlier, a reclusive Londoner called Birdy, reeling from a life-changing diagnosis, inherits Spyglass. This unexpected gift from a long-lost grandmother brings her to the pretty seaside village of Hope Falls. But then Birdy stumbles upon a shadowy London clinic that claims to be able to predict a person's date of death, including her own. Secrets start to unravel, and as the line between truth and lies blurs, Birdy feels compelled to right some old wrongs.
My Reaction:
I went into this one knowing nothing, really. I hadn't read the blurb. Just saw it recommended somewhere (I think...), recognized the author, and thought it could be entertaining. If I'd known the major themes of the novel, I might have skipped it. I prefer to avoid stories with medical or health-related storylines, because I just don't want to think about that stuff when I'm relaxing, if I can help it. Real life has enough health worry and medical crap in it, as far as I'm concerned. I don't want to read about it for fun! To be fair, the author left things very vague, which I did appreciate, but still... Not my favorite topic.
Aside from that, this had too many things that didn't make sense. I was listening to the audiobook version, which (for me, at least) tends to make it easier to just painlessly breeze over a good bit of nonsense, but even so, there were many head-scratching moments. (Check out some other reviews if you're interested.) Basically, the author is favoring shocking twists and confusing misdirects over logic and believability. A certain amount of that is what makes thrillers fun to read, but at some point it tips over into ridiculousness. This time, I was left with a sense of dissatisfaction.
