2024 Book Review #33: There Should Have Been Eight

 

I discovered this new-to-me author by browsing the "new books" shelf at my town library.  This was an  absolutely fantastic psychological thriller.....almost like a true crime novel but fiction. 

STORY SUMMARY

There is a remote estate in the Southern Alps of New Zealand. It belongs to the Shepherd family and the only remaining family member is Darcie, in her late twenties. Darcie is one of a group of eight friends....well...there were eight...until her younger sister Bea commited suicide when they were in their late teens. Darcie is close friends with Ash (now her husband), Aaron (now engaged to a woman named  Grace), Kaea, who has been divorced twice but he says he's close to a third marriage, Vansi who is now married to Phoenix, and Luna, a single woman who is best  friends with Vansi and Kaea and who is going blind but no one knows it yet. 

Darcie and Ash have invited everyone to the estate (it's early April) for a reunion. They have gathered to reminisce at this family estate which used to be a glorious mansion like right out of a gothic novel. However, there was a tragedy years ago and part of the mansion was burned.  Remnants of the burned wing remain. 

Best friends.....old crushes...secret enemies...and new lovers are all under one roof for the first time in 9 years. But when the weather turns into a horrible storm and they're snowed in in this remote area, there's nowhere to hide from their shared history. 

Their supposed normality turns to long-buried grief, bitterness, and rage. Underneath all of this there's the nagging feeling that Bea's shocking death wasn't what it was claimed to be.   Before the long weekend is over, the truth will be revealed...and at a terrible cost. 

MY THOUGHTS

This book is super fast paced and very well written.  I did find some editing errors which is frustrating as I see this a lot in contemporary fiction. I truly don't understand it since most authors have an editor!!  

I loved that the book is told in Luna's voice and that we see the friends from her perspective but we also see them from the other character's perspective as well.  There  seemed to be so many characters thrown in at once that I actually   wrote on a post it note, who was who, who was married to who, etc.  It did help with the first couple of chapters.  Once the characters were established and i was almost halfway through the book, I found I no longer needed the note. 

Each character has a full personality revealed.  I don't want to get into too much detail because there are so many clues in this book that lead you to guess the perpetrator(s),  that it would spoil it for you if I reveal  too much. 

The author is excellent at weaving the past into the present....there's a whole of mystery and drama in this book with a small amount of romance.  Nothing is sappy about this story. It's actually very well developed touching on several main themes.

Themes seem to be:  mental illness, anxiety, secrets, sibling rivalry, revenge, friendship, loyalty, betrayal.

This book kept me locked in from start to finish.  It's definitely a gripping psychological thriller. It's one of the best I've read in a long time. 

I loved how Luna was reading part of an ancestor's diary (an ancestor of Bea and Darcie) and how this played into the present day. Many parallels that I'm glad I paid attention to.  Luna's overwhelming narrative at times bugged me because she seemed to obsessed with Bea and the circumstances, but then again, you realize that Darcie has never given specifics to Bea's suicide. There was no funeral, no saying "good bye".  Supposedly, Bea just disappeared 9 years ago and Darcie was informed of her death. Parts of this was so far fetched...until you realize the  element of mental illness in certain characters. 

I highly recommend this story!!

In my opinion, this book is approrpriate for ages 17 and older (due to mature content).

On a scale of 1-10, with 10 being the highest, I rate this a 9.