Genre: Thriller | Mystery
Release Date: Expected 6th July 2023
Publisher: Headline
Stories change depending on who's telling them …
As kids, Emily and Chess were inseparable, but their bond has been strained by the demands of their adult lives. So when Chess suggests a girls trip to Italy, Emily jumps at the chance to reconnect with her best friend.
Villa Aestas in Orvieto is breath-taking, but it has a dark past: in 1974 it was rented by a notorious rockstar, who was joined by up-and-coming musician Pierce Sheldon and his girlfriend, Mari. By the end of the holiday Pierce is dead, and Mari goes on to write one of the greatest horror novels of all time.
As Emily digs into the villa's history, she begins to think that Pierce's murder wasn't just a tale of sex, drugs, and rock & roll gone wrong, but something more sinister - and that there might be clues hidden in the now-iconic works that Mari left behind. Yet the closer that Emily gets to the truth, the more tension she feels developing between her and Chess. As secrets from the past come to light, equally dangerous betrayals from the present also emerge - and it begins to look like the villa will claim another victim before the summer ends.
"Not a love story at all. Or yes, a love story, but there's horror inside of it. There's death and loss, blood and sweat. Just as there is in every love story, after all."
Rachel Hawkins is a master of suspense - and The Villa is no exception. An indulgently dark, twisty and intricately complex story that engulfs the reader in a chilling gothic thriller but set against an unsuspecting contemporary backdrop. We find ourselves arriving in in a beautiful summer in Italy, only to end up dropped into a world of betrayal, isolation, mysterious deaths and missing clues.
The story moves slowly, taking time to set the scene and leave us thinking about what's lurking on the next page with bated breath. And underneath the cinematic, high-stakes mystery is a story about friendship, love and sisterhood that was both delicate and devilish. They explore the grey areas between love and hate, admiration and envy, obsession and love. The storytelling throughout is quiet, calm - and that makes it feel even more sinister. There isn't explosions and shock reveals, just creeping and lurking evils waiting to be revealed.
Emily was a complex narrator - a little distant and matter-of-fact. But her thoughts, the way she saw the world intrigued me. She was a woman on the edge; she'd had enough of a toxic ex-husband, of her failing health, of her own insecurities and a best friend who doesn't seem to understand. Her relationship with Chess was a vivid portrait of a lifelong love - a lasting friendship, but one that over the years has been tainted with jealousy and resentment.
Our misguided summer vacation moves onwards, only broken by fragments of the past from diaries, manuscripts, media snippets - almost making us see the ghosts of the people who'd been in the Villa before and building up a complicated network of people, lies, and death that spans decades and continents.
On the surface, our main characters feel oddly familiar - almost generic castings in your average thriller; and I adore how Hawkins sets up these characters and then develops and changes them, adding layers and layers to them as we get to know them and then do it all over again. These layers keep adding up, leaving us fully in the dark about how far people really will go.
I am a sucker for books about books, so seeing a mystery novelist like Emily find herself in her very own murder mystery was deliciously twisted and morbidly entertaining as reality and fiction blurs and conjoins. A disturbingly dark story about obsession and possession that absolutely demands to be read in one sitting.
⭐⭐⭐⭐
I was gifted an advanced reviewers copy of this title in return for an honest review.
cw: death, alcohol, abuse, sex, illness.
Comments
Post a Comment