What the publisher says
Someone is dead. Someone is a killer. Someone is lying.
A woman is found in bloodstained clothes on the lonely coast of County Mayo.
At first, she won’t speak. Then a name comes: Ruth. And a story about her missing friend: Maura.
Ruth says she and Maura were staying in a clifftop house together. But there’s no trace of her there. Nothing but a pool of blood.
Ruth says the pair fought in the days before Maura disappeared. But the locals say they only ever saw one woman.
Ruth swears she’s telling the truth, but do the answers really lie in everything she didn’t say?
My reading experience
This is the first time I read a Jane Casey novel, and I found it a real page-turner.
The setting is beautiful, County Mayo, very beautifully written as a background setting. The atmosphere is thick and uncomfortable, though, and the plot takes us through all sorts of twists and turns.
The characters are interesting, and, until the end, we do not know who is telling the truth or what we will learn in “everything she didn’t say”. Ruth is showing different sides of her personality, and just as you start to like her, something tells you in the back of your mind that maybe she is not a good person, but then she seems lovely again. Maura is present throughout the book, although she is absent. We just wonder about her and about Lisa. Who is who and who has committed a crime.
I liked the cops, Ben and Liam. They have their own stories, some of them not that great. But they are good at their job all along the book. They are likeable and human.
I thought the tempo of the plot was good and I could not put this book down. I was pleased to discover this author and I will look for her books again in the future.
Thank you to Netgalley and HarperCollins UK, HarperFiction | Hemlock Press for giving me the opportunity to discover this book. All opinions are my own.
You can follow Jane Casey on her Facebook page and you can hear from her about the book and what inspired her to write it on this RTÉ Radio 1 interview.
How about leaving a comment and getting the discussion going?