Spoilers Ahead: 

This book has been on my TBR for a long time, and I’ve finally got round to reading it! It was okay, but the ending was a bit anti-climactic. 

We follow Lottie as she moves to a different place with Neil, her husband, and Albie, their son. Neil has recently got a new job, and they’re relocating to it. Neil had been paralysed for a while, after a work accident, and Albie had been bullied by people at school, so they needed a fresh start. 

Ted and Nita ran ’Seascapes’ - Neil’s new job - and Lottie is immediately weirded out by them. They’re always around, they have no kids and no one is allowed in their house. 

Lottie grows more suspicious as they act weirder and more suspicious, but Neil does everything he can to try and dissuade her. Him and Albie are often with Ted and Nita now, so Lottie goes back to the place she grew up. Her mother left when she was young, so she was trying to heal. Then, when she finds out Cerys, one of Albie’s friend’s mum’s, is looking into her mother’s disappearance. They find out that the old gardeners, Mary and Tom, who had to leave abruptly after an argument with Ted and Nita, suspected that there was someone else in the house, exactly as Lottie did. 

Kay Price, Lottie’s (or Charlie’s, as she used to go by) mother, was an alcoholic. She was living in despair with her daughter, who was once best friends with a girl called Claire. Claire’s mum, Yasmin, didn’t like them spending time together, so she enlisted Kay’s help to look after Claire. Charlie was left to the side a little bit, and Claire was a spoiled brat, but Kay looked after her. One day, both Claire and Kay disappeared, and it was made to look like Kay had stolen her and left Charlie behind. 

She finds out Neil had a thing with Nita, and a pharmaceutical drug addiction which lead to him being hurt at work (it wasn’t an accident) and they find out that Ted and Nita (who used to be Yasmin and Graham Fuller) have Kay, her mum, in their house. They’ve been keeping her prisoner, because Claire (their daughter) was killed on Kay’s watch - by accident of course, but all they saw was that she was dead. In the end, Tom dies prematurely, and Mary has a breakdown, and ends up killing both Ted and Nita. Lottie, Neil and Albie stay a family, and they have a new life in Seascapes. 

I thought this book was so thrilling. It started off so creepy, and most of the book remained that way, and it was so cool and enticing. However, I thought the ending was a little anticlimactic. It was sort of made better by Mary Gooding (thank you for killing those insane people x) but it was just a bit of a mental plot. I can’t put my finger on it, but I was expecting something more. As I said, the majority of the book really scratched an itch in my head, so I can’t complain too much. 

I hope Neil suffers from everything that could hurt him. I hope he burns his hands on the hob, or steps on a Lego brick, and I hope that every glass of water he makes is always warm, and I hope that every night his pillow isn’t right for him. I hope he hits his shins, and his ankles, with a scooter, and I hope that every fruit or vegetable he buys is mouldy the next day. As you can gather, I despise him!!!! It’s the biggest copout of the century, Lottie forgiving him. He’s spent years lying to her, followed by him belittling her concerns and questioning her judgement as a mother?! All for the attention of someone who actually wanted shit-all to do with him? Selfish bastard. I was really hoping something would happen to him. Ted and Nita are assholes, don’t get me wrong, but Neil is the real villain here… get him gone!!!! 

Another little nitpick, but Claire and Charlie have too similar a name, it’s confusing. My brain can’t handle that all at once, to be honest. Other than that, a book I would definitely recommend reading! 

Good plot, and most of the characters feel real, but the writing overall is clunky.

It started off a bit slow, but as the story went on and the atmosphere became more tense I was unable to put the book down. At times the story becomes so far-fetched that it’s distracting. This absurdity is at its worst in the ending, which ruins the tension that had been built up earlier.