CHRISTENA APPLEYARD
BROKEN THINGS by Lauren Oliver
(Hodder £17.99, 416 pp) IT IS five years after friends Mia and Brynn, both 13 at the time, were suspected of, but never actually charged with, the brutal murder of their friend, Summer.
Now, the pair are reluctantly reunited to investigate the strange circumstances of Summer’s death all those years ago.
Central to the mystery is just how much the three girls’ shared obsession with an old fantasy novel drove their adolescent actions, which ended in Summer’s macabre, violent death in the Vermont woods.
Lauren Oliver has a gift for witty oneliners and she is skilful with adolescent dialogue, too. She does raise interesting questions about the phenomenon of fan fiction but, ultimately, it’s a bit too esoteric to strike a chord with a wider audience.
THE DREAM WIFE by Louisa de Lange
(Orion £8.99, 368 pp) The publicity blurbs for psychological thrillers routinely claim that they have broken the mould. Well, Louisa de Lange has certainly managed to dent it with this clever tale where things aren’t what they seem.
Despite being a first-time novelist, she has come up with a genuinely original way of telling a tale laced with extreme menace in an everyday setting.
The unhappy wife of a control-freak alpha male husband puts up with his cruel, domineering ways for the sake of her young son. So far, so familiar.
But she also dreams — a lot. To say any more would give away the story and the real cleverness lies in the way the plot and those dreams weave together. This is simple thriller-writing at its best.
NO FURTHER QUESTIONS by Gillian McAllister
(Penguin £7.99, 432 pp) BECKY and Martha are utterly devoted sisters, until Martha’s baby dies and Becky is put on trial for murder. This tense and compelling courtroom drama is written with convincing detail by an author who’s also a lawyer.
The suspense is expertly controlled and we are kept in doubt about who is actually guilty until almost the final page.
McAllister isn’t frightened to tackle big issues and she does so with calculated sensitivity: there is nothing gratuitously callous about the plot.
But the details of the baby’s death are heartbreaking and the clever grand reveal is almost as shocking.
This subject matter is a big gamble because, although it’s carefully handled, there is little to redeem the unrelieved misery of the book. And it will be too distressing for many readers. It was for this one.