Amy Myers is known for her short stories and historical novels featuring Victorian chef Auguste Didier and chimney sweep Tom Wasp. Her contemporary series feature ex-cop Peter Marsh and Daughter and classic car detective Jack Colby, and she is currently working on a new series starring Cara Shelley who runs a café in the grounds of stately home Tanton Towers.
Website: www.amymyers.net
It all begins in Brittany, where nurse Carly, doctor husband Rob and their children are on a camping holiday, one that like so many is a mix of good and not so good.
The family holiday takes a downturn however when in a drunken moment Carly asks Rob her fatal question - ‘Who else would you go for if you could?’ Even more fatal is Rob’s reply - ‘I quite like Jenni’. Pretty Jenni and handsome Craig are their best friends. What follows then is the story of each of these four characters related in short scenes in the present tense by each of them in turn. It becomes a convoluted maze of inter-relationships taken one step at a time, twisting one way and then another.
The author writes well and the plot is cleverly structured among the four characters. However the downside of the presentation of the plot is that it made it harder to identify with the characters; which in turn made the story a rather slow build.
The author’s narrative skills are evident; but they slip a little off-course in this debut novel. The psychological analysis of the characters’ emotions made this novel less of a thriller per se, and more a tale of the dark relationships that can form between friends - when sexual attraction is no longer existential.
