Synopsis
‘The book club was her idea, of course. Alice's.
It was her way into our group. A chance to get close.
I knew from the day she arrived that she couldn't be trusted.
Our MC Lucy has only been in her little village for around 3 months, but she’s already made some great friends who are all incredibly close, and love going to the pub together and getting jolly.
Suddenly she gets a new next door neighbour, Alice, who seems to be acting strange around her, and is inserting herself into her friendship group quite easily, even managing to organise a book club.
Lucy just thinks she’s very friendly to start, and desperate to make friends, but it starts to become clear quite quickly that she is actually there to cause problems.
Lucy left London due to having an affair with her boss and it ending badly, and we know early on that Alice knows about this, and for some reason is seeking revenge.
Each character within the story gets their own voice for some chapters, and we start to see the cracks within their friendships, as they are all keeping secrets from each other, some worse than others.
Alice isn’t just trying to fuck up Lucy’s life, she’s also determined to ruin the lives of the others.
There were some parts of the story that I found far-fetched, including a murder and attempted murder from Alice, as I just don’t think it would happen like that in real life. I also was a little bit disappointed with the outcome of the story, Alice’s reason for going after Lucy seemed a bit of a reach (although you can tell she’s a psychopath, so she probably thought it made sense) and also the way things get left with Lucy at the end of the story just seemed very anti-climactic.
However, overall I really did enjoy the story and the build up to the ending.
3/5 stars
