Monday, October 15, 2018

Our House (Louise Candlish)

I was drawn immediately to the cover of Louise Candlish's fabulous Our House. The house itself is designed with a bright exterior and a beautiful tree outside, but wait...are those black clouds looming ominously above it? How can such an innocent-sounding title take you on such a thrilling roller coaster ride? The answer is in the little details that form such an extravagant, horrifying puzzle.

One of the most exciting events in anyone's life is the purchase of a house. But what if the person living there never sold it in the first place? Such is the beginning of Our House, when Fiona Lawson comes home one day to find strangers moving into her treasured home. How can this be? Where is her husband, Bram, in all this? Candlish takes her time with piecing the puzzle together, allowing the reader to get just a tantalizing piece or two as she deftly goes back and forth in time. The story is told both through Fiona's eyes and Bram's, and Candlish wisely makes each section just a few pages. I was addicted, as were many people judging from the reviews, and found myself reading way past my bedtime.

Some reviewers have said the middle bogged the story down, but I didn't feel that way at all. Candlish wrote every word for a reason, and by the time, you get to the heart-stopping conclusion, you understand exactly how the dominoes started to fall from the very first page.

MY RATING - 4