I was drawn to this book by the Intreguing synopsis and the tag line on the eye catching cover.Caroline and Francis who are struggling to repair their shattered marriage jump at the opportunity to take part in a house swap.Only the house that they finds themselves in is so sparse and empty they find it hard to imagine that anyone has actually been living there.Not long after they arrive,Caroline starts discovering objects that remind her of someone she used to know,someone she desperately wants to leave in the past.It all sounded so intriguing and mysterious which it was,mostly but at times I also felt like I had accidentally downloaded 50 shades of Grey by mistake.
The story flips back and forth between two time frames,the present day and 2013.The house swap chapters where set in the present day and where among my favourite parts of the story.Who owned the empty,emotionless house?Who was the mysterious,stalker like neighbour? Is there a connection between what is happening in the present day and something that happened in the past? In the 2013 chapters we discover why Caroline and Francis`s marriage is falling apart.Francis had a addiction,we are never told the origins of this addiction but to put it bluntly,Francis was a doped up mess.So does Caroline try to help her husband get through his issues? Nope,instead she decides to have an affair with her HOT colleague Carl.And how do we know that Carl is HOT,well we know this because we are constantly told how HOT he is,and how short and tight Caroline`s skirts are,and how great the sex was.Caroline and Francis have a very young son called Eddie who Caroline apparently loves very very much,or so she keeps saying.She loves him so much that after not seeing him all day because she has been at work,the minute she gets home she can't wait to get him fed,bathed and into bed so she can leave him in the Care of his doped up,comatosed dad and disappear off to meet her lover.At least poor little Eddie could rely on Caroline`s Mum for some proper love and attention.I didn't like Caroline very much and not only because I don't like people who cheat on their partners.I would have liked Francis`s character to have been a bit more fleshed out,although there was a few chapters that where told from his p.o.v,we mainly learnt about his character through Caroline`s biased observations.Interspersed throughout the book was italicized chapters voiced by the person who was staying in Caroline and Francis`s flat.These parts where gripping,sinister and intreguing and contained a shocking ` please don't do that` moment that made me gasp out loud out of fear for a characters safety.
The House Swap is definitely well written,the characters`s where vivid and realistic,the motive behind the campaign against Caroline was heart breaking and believable.I did enjoy the book enough to finish it and I would happily read another book by this author in the future.
AUTHOR BIO
Rebecca Fleet lives in London and works in Windsor. Her debut thriller, The House Swap, was published in 2018 to great acclaim. The Second Wife is her eagerly anticipated second thriller.
PUBLICATION DATE: 29th November 2018
PRINT LENGTH: 352 Pages
PUBLISHER: Black Swan
GENRE: Thriller
PURCHASE LINK...
https://www.amazon.co.uk/House-Swap-Rebecca-Fleet/dp/1784163449/ref=sr_1_1?crid=YML81ELDPH0X&keywords=the+house+swap+rebecca+fleet&qid=1576445553&s=books&sprefix=The+house+swap%2Caps%2C502&sr=1-1
No comments:
Post a Comment