Claire McGowan – Steph's Book Blog

About The Book

A vicious assault. A devastating accusation. Who should she trust, her husband or her best friend?

It was supposed to be the perfect reunion: six university friends together again after twenty years. Host Ali finally has the life she always wanted, a career she can be proud of and a wonderful family with her college boyfriend, now husband. But that night her best friend makes an accusation so shocking that nothing will ever be the same again.

When Karen staggers in from the garden, bleeding and traumatised, she claims that she has been assaulted—by Ali’s husband, Mike. Ali must make a split-second decision: who should she believe? Her horrified husband, or her best friend? With Mike offering a very different version of events, Ali knows one of them is lying—but which? And why?

When the ensuing chaos forces her to re-examine the golden era the group shared at university, Ali realises there are darker memories too. Memories that have lain dormant for decades. Memories someone would kill to protect.

My Review

With thanks to the publisher for the copy received. I am familiar with Claire McGowan’s books having read a few from her Paula Maguire series. This is a stand-alone novel and she has proved that she can do both perfectly well.

When the six ex Oxford University friends had a reunion years after their graduation none of them had any idea that things would go so tragically wrong. The way each of them handled it revealed how their friendship wasn’t as strong or genuine as they thought.

Most of it is modern day and concerns Ali, wife of the charged man and ‘best friend’ of the victim. She was a character who baffled and annoyed me the more I read. Her obsession with image, her snobbery and especially her noticing that her daughter Cassie had chipped nail varnish on her toes when she had a lot more to think about.

But there are flashbacks to 1993, when they finished university and differing accounts of what happened on the night of the dinner. In each of these more dubious aspects of each character is revealed.

Cassie, her brother Benji and Jake, Karen’s son, were the only characters I really liked. They were the only ones who could see how tragic the events of the night and the few days after were and they were not thinking about the consequences for themselves.

This is a great novel that made me question everything I was reading. I missed a lot, I suspected the wrong people and I seethed occasionally at the elitist attitudes. It is probably one of the most character driven novels that I have read recently.

Claire McGowan will be appearing at First Monday Crime on October 7th 2019. Details can be found here https://www.firstmondaycrime.com/

Not everyone who’s missing is lost..

The Lost had been sat in the kindle pile for a while and after seeing a flurry of tweets about the new book in the series I decided to see what I was missing.
I found it to be a fantastic novel. The first in a new series Paula Maguire has been employed by the police force in her home town. She is working with a team who are assigned to cold cases but who are also investigating a current case, the disappearances of two missing teenage girls. She doesn’t really want to be back there. Looking after her father, seeing old friends she hasn’t been in touch with for years and unanswered questions about her Mother’s disappearance years earlier.
The team were brilliant. Consisting of both Catholic and Protestant, Northern and Southern Irish, the way they interacted with each other was a joy to read. I could hear the dialect as I read, something that I have felt in other novels seemed false.
The investigation has its problems and initially Paula isn’t accepted by the others but she is determined to solve the case with or without their help.
It was a great book to read, I know that there are at least another two I can read and I’m looking forward to doing so. I see great potential for the team of detectives in Ballyterrin.