The Summer House by Keri Beevis
Genre: Psychological thriller, Suspense
Read: 7th March 2023
Published: 6th March 2023
★★★★★ 4.5 stars (rounded up)
DESCRIPTION:
Mead House was once our childhood home.
Despite my fears, I always knew we would have to return to face the demons of our past.
Back to the place where it happened, to where, as carefree teenagers, we lost our elder sister in the most brutal of circumstances.
As executors of our grandmother’s will, my twin brother, Ollie, and I needed to empty the house for resale.
What I didn’t expect to discover was my sister’s secret journal that contained her most private thoughts and shocking dark secrets.
Now I am questioning everything that I saw that night. Did I get it wrong, who I saw?
Did my evidence send an innocent man, my then boyfriend's brother, to jail for the last 17 years?
I know I have no choice. If I want to find answers, I will have to go back to that fateful night my sister died. When she made her last visit to the summer house.
MY THOUGHTS:
One sister murdered....One brother jailed...One love betrayed...
A dark and compelling tale that is as complex as it is enticing. THE SUMMER HOUSE has a tangled web of secrets mingled with a brimming anger for revenge...and an abundance of twists sure to keep you turning the pages. The structure whose initial purpose was relaxation and leisure had become something of a den of lust, obsession and, ultimately, murder. With all the clues peppered throughout, the hints dropped, the nuances alluded to...can you guess whodunnit? It took me a couple of guesses before I settled on a suspect but Keri Beevis makes you work for it, let me tell you!
Twins Lana and Ollie Hamilton return to the house in which they grew up after the death of their grandmother. Mead House, situated in Norfolk, had been their grandmother's home since shortly after her marriage to their grandfather and then became their home after the death of their parents when they were children. It had been a place of sanctuary where memories made...until a day one summer seventeen years ago that changed their lives forever.
Lana and Ollie's 19 year old sister Camille was brutally murdered in the summer house on the Mead House estate and, though it had once been a happy place, it was left to rack and ruin after the murder, overgrown with weeds and the lights turned out leaving it forever in darkness. Nana Kitty, having once loved the summer house and the rose garden that surrounded it, left it to nature to bury it along with the memories of what had died there.
Now Lana has returned to Mead House with Ollie in her wake, bringing with him a perky new fiance who looks as though she has never done a day's work in her life and spends most of time sunbathing by the pool...when she's not in it...often with a margarita. The twins plan to clear out the house as quickly as possible and sell the house, along with all its memories.
While clearing out Camille's bedroom, which has remained virtually in tact since her death seventeen years before, Lana discovers a hidden diary of her sister's beneath the floorboards. Having already read the one kept in the bedside drawer, Lana wonders what secrets this journal holds that it needed to be hidden. What secrets did Camille have that she didn't want to risk anyone finding out? But whatever startling secrets Lana did discover, they also raised yet even further questions...leading Lana to wonder if the man she had seen, Camille's boyfriend Sebastian, from her bedroom window on the night of her sister's death was really guilty of her murder, despite having been serving a prison sentence for that very crime for the past seventeen years. Had the person Camille been seeing in her secret trysts, who is only identified by a lone initial, really been the one responsible for the murder?
Lana and Ollie's return to town has also stirred up the long buried emotions of Sebastian's younger brother Xavier who, having grown up together, had once been best friends with the Hamilton twins. A friendship that had turned into something more romantic between Xav and Lana. But when she provided evidence that helped put his brother away, Xav was left betrayed and devastated. And now Lana is back and all those old feelings have been brought back to the surface. And it isn't long before he finds himself embroiled in something he had no desire to be caught up in. But when Lana's life is threatened more than once, Xav can't ignore that someone really wants to keep some secrets buried. And if that's the case...does that mean someone else was responsible for Camille's murder 17 years ago?
As Lana, Ollie and Xav team up to try and unlock the mystery surrounding the murder, time is running out before the murderer will strike again. And there are some secrets that must never come to light.
THE SUMMER HOUSE begins as a slow burn but it is compelling enough to keep you intrigued and turning the pages as you try to uncover the truth. I love the multiple third person POV which helps throw plenty of red herrings our way as we try to wade through them all to get to the truth. I love the relationship between Lana and Xav and seeing how feelings are rediscovered, but also Lana and Ollie's troubled relationship finding common ground once again. There are, of course, the usual token irritating characters to help throw us off the scent...are do they have a more sinister purpose?
I had hoped to see a few more flashbacks once the journal was discovered but given the nature of its dark obsessive content, maybe the overall gist that Beevis gave us through Lana was more fitting. But the flashbacks came hard and fast around the 60% mark, leaving us to question their significance.
I enjoyed this book far more than the last one "The Sleepover" but maybe not quite as much as "Every Little Breath" (my thrilling introduction to Beevis) which I totally loved. But it does come a close second. I'm not normally a fan of slow burns but then it is all in the delivery...and Beevis certainly delivered.
Overall, THE SUMMER HOUSE is a dark and enticing but wholly addictive psychological thriller that you will not want to put down until you reach the satisfactory end.
I would like to thank #KeriBeevis, #Netgalley, #BoldwoodBooks and #RachelsRandomResources for an ARC of #TheSummerHouse in exchange for an honest review.
MEET THE AUTHOR:
Keri lives in Norfolk, England, with her two naughty kitties, Ellie and Lola, and a plentiful supply of red wine (her writing fuel). She loves Hitchcock movies, exploring creepy places, and gets extremely competitive in local pub quizzes. She is also a self-confessed klutz.
Social Media links:
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