No Place Like Home by Lynda Stacey
Genre: Psychological thriller
Read: 3rd July 2021
Published: 6th July 2021
★★★ 3 stars
DESCRIPTION:
He knows where you are…
Sisters Molly and Beth Winters thought the remote clifftop house would be the perfect place to hide away after their mother’s brutal murder. They were wrong….
He wants revenge…
Because someone from the girls’ past has already found their safe house and he is watching and waiting in the shadows ready to make them pay.
He won’t stop until you’re dead...
Their new home should have been the place the sisters were safe.
But no place is safe forever.
A gripping new thriller from Lynda Stacey guaranteed to keep you up all night!
Perfect for fans of Sue Watson, S E Lynes, Jackie Kabler and Kendra Elliot.
MY REVIEW:
I love psychological thrillers and especially those with a remote setting such as this. The sound of the wind whipping around the house's exterior. The scraping of the tree branch on the window. The banging of an open door. The whispers in the wind that sound as if it is calling your name. That sense of stifling claustrophobia that leaves you with nowhere to run and nowhere to hide. NO PLACE LIKE HOME promised all this and more...and I kept waiting for the hammer to fall. Instead a tree did...with a crashing thump to the beach below. And that fixed the scraping of the branch on the window at night.
Molly and her younger sister Beth are moving into their new house inherited from their mother by way of her deceased partner. It stands on a remote cliffside overlooking an almost secluded beach where only surfers seem to be the only ones deluded enough to venture into the cold waters of the North Sea. There appears to be no one for miles, let alone anything remotely resembling civilisation, with only a potholed lane leading them to the house.
For Molly, she is trying to give both her and Beth a new start...away from the memories and any chance of Beth's incarcerated father Charlie finding them upon his release. The letter in her pocket informs her of such and she keeps it hidden from her sister. Beth, however, doesn't want to be there. She has done nothing but grumble the entire journey and that doesn't change when she sees the partially dilapidated house. She hears noises and sees shadows and doesn't want to spend a moment more there, wanting instead to return to York and to live with Molly's ex Dan. But Molly refuses to be swayed. This is their new start.
Almost as soon as they step through the door something seems to be aligned against them. They hear noises that don't belong, shadows in the garden and on top of that, the back door has been left wide open with the keys still in the lock! Molly assumes Carol, the niece of her mother's partner Michael, had been to clear up and left the door open. I mean, the carpet had been ripped up and the kitchen was spotless with a bucket of still warm water left there. She ventures into the back garden and almost gets the sense that someone is watching her before dismissing it as ridiculous. Upon stepping into the shed, she is shocked when the door is slammed shut, locking her inside. Believing Beth is trying to scare her into changing her mind about staying here, she shouts her sister's name trying to get her attention. Instead, she gets the neighbour's.
Thus enters Niall McCormack and his German Shepherd pup Dillon. If anyone gave me the creeps, it was him. I don't know what it was but he just always seemed to be there watching and waiting...seemingly with an ulterior motive. I didn't trust him. Beth took an instant dislike to him. Maybe because she saw the chemistry between him and her sister and she wanted Molly to get back together with Dan. She spent rather a lot of time escaping the creepy house and in the company of new-found surfer friend Jackson.
All the while, as Molly and Beth settle into their new home someone is indeed watching them. He had only just made it out of the house in time the day they moved in, not even having time to remove the bucket or to close the door. Molly put that down to Carol while the locking of her in the shed and the disappearance of belongings she assumed was Beth trying to scare her out of their new home so they could return to civilisation and, more importantly, to Dan. But this someone is watching and waiting from the shadows, ready to make them pay for the secrets of the past. He wants revenge and he will stop at nothing to get it...not until they are dead.
Their new home should have been the one place the sisters were safe. For their is no place like home. But no place is safe forever...
After it's promising premise, NO PLACE LIKE HOME should have been an exciting atmospheric thriller with that sense of claustrophobia. But I found it lagged and was relatively slow paced. The plot was fairly predictable, although that doesn't put me off, but the twists just weren't there nor was the excitement and euphoria of tearing through the pages at the speed of light. While the pace was steady it was also slow and failed to pick up and I found myself just wanting to get to the end. Its saving grace was that it was a fairly quick read.
I really didn't like any of the characters, although I did quite enjoy Beth's spikiness which added a little zest to things. But Molly made some stupid decisions for someone who is supposed to be the adult here. The fact she is a dentist with talk of amalgams, fillings, extractions and stitches had me almost hyperventilating with anxiety...for that in itself is a horror story.
By the end, there was no real clear answer as to who, what or why was stalking the girls and some things just didn't add up. I didn't hate the book ; I just found it didn't live up to its premise. The plotline was good but it could have been better as it had more potential.
Overall, NO PLACE LIKE HOME is a decent enough read, it just wasn't thrilling enough for me.
I would like to thank #LyndaStacey, #Netgalley, #RachelsRandomResources and #BoldwoodBooks for an ARC of #NoPlaceLikeHome in exchange for an honest review.
MEET THE AUTHOR:
Over the past 30 years she's often worked two jobs and has also been a nurse, a model (in her much younger days), an emergency first response instructor and a PADI Scuba Diving Instructor ... and yes, she was crazy enough to dive in the sea with sharks, without a cage.
Following a life changing car accident in 2008, Lynda was left with limited mobility in her right arm. Unable to dive or teach anymore, she turned to her love of writing, a hobby she'd followed avidly since being a teenager.
Her own life story, along with varied career choices helps Lynda to create stories of romantic suspense, with challenging and unpredictable plots.
After joining the Romantic Novelist Association in 2014 under the umbrella of the New Writers Scheme, Lynda's debut novel 'House of Secrets' won the Choc Lit Search for a Star competition in 2015. She's previously published five books, her sixth book 'No Place Like Home' will be brought out in July 2021, with her new publisher Boldwood Books.
She currently lives in a small rural hamlet near Doncaster, with her 'hero at home husband', Haydn, whom she's been happily married to for over 25 years.
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