The Dry by Jane Harper

This is one of the best books I've read this year. It's set in the Australian outback. One of three brothers is found dead at a remote spot not far from his car which is full of water and supplies and in full working order. As his brother Nathan tries to work out what happened to Cameron, we slowly find out just how hard and unforgiving life in rural Australia is. The plot is great but it's the charcters that make the book such a page turner. I really wanted to find out what Nathan had done that made the locals hate him and who might have wanted Cameron dead.

All the Hidden Truths by Claire Askew

This 2018 debut novel tells the story of a mass shooting at an Edinburgh college by a young student.  Each chapter is written in the third person from the perspective of the shooter's mother, one of the victims' mothers or the detective that is overseeing the investigation. The first chapters are set the day before the shooting and the book covers the month afterwards. Unlike the novel We need to talk about Kevin, there's very little reflection on the perpetrator's past. The focus of the story is the response of the gutter press and social media, and how that affects the families and the police.

It's a great story and an easy read. I'm looking forward to reading Askew's second novel What you pay for.

The Weekend by Charlotte Wood

I enjoyed this much more than Wood's previous novel. It tells the story of three female friends in their seventies. They are clearing out the home of their fourth friend, Sylvie, who has recently died. Jude is a proud and fastidious restaurateur who has lived the life of a kept women. Adele is a widowed actor with money problems and Wendy is a widowed academic and writer. Wendy brings along her dog Finn who is so old and frail he should probably haver been put down some time ago.

The loss of Sylvie has changed the dynamic of the foursome and they're wondering if their friendship will survive it. The tension slowly builds as the women begin to get on each others nerves. It reaches its climax on Christmas Eve, which just happened to be the day I finished the book. There is very little backfill, the book focuses on the present. The dog acts as a symbol for ageing. He's frightened, frail, messy and constantly needs accomodating for, but Wendy still loves and needs him.

The wife and the widow by Christian White

This is an easy to read crime thriller with a great twist (the sort that has you going back through the earlier chapters looking for the clues). It takes place on a Australian island. Kate (the widow) has a holiday home there and Abby (the wife) is a local. Kate's husband is killed at a secluded part of the beach that is a known gay cruising spot.

The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides

I was expecting great things of this thriller but I have to say I was a little disappointed. The premise is great. A psychologist (Theo) interviews an artist (Alicia) in a psychiartric facility to try and work out why she shot her husband but she hasn't uttered a word since the incident. Theo delves into Alicia's life, her friendships, her family, her marriage and her work. He meets with anyone he can to try and piece together her state of mind at the time of the shooting.

There are great twists but I lost interest in all the interviews Theo was conducting. I've given it 4 stars as it was good but, based on other reviews, I was expecting it to be outstanding.

Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng

The story begins with a house fire in the affluent suburb of Shaker Heights. The house belongs to Bill and Elena Richardson and their four teenagers. The youngest child, Izzy, is supected of starting the fire. The Richardson's own an apartment that they rent to a photographer and her daughter. The book explores the tangled relationships between the two families that culminate in the fire. It is a story about motherhood, what it means to be a mother and what lengths mothers will go to to protect their children.

It's a beautifully written book. It's not fast paced but there's enough going on to make it a page turner. There are a broad range of interesting characters and the author provides some great insights into photography and motherhood. This passgae really resonated with me "to a parent, your child wasn't just a person: your child was a place, a kind of Narnia, a vast eternal place where the present you were living and the past you remembered and the future you longed for all existed at once... And each time you left it, each time your child passed out of your sight, you feared you might never be able to return to that place again."

Come back for me by Heidi Perks

I really enjoyed this book. It begins on a stormy night in 1993. A family of 5, the Harveys, flee their home on the  small island of Evergreen (off the Dorset coast). The story then moves to the present day, when a body is found buried on the island at the bottom of the Harvey's garden. Stella Harvey is the youngest member of the family. She was 11 when her family fled and is now a counsellor in her thirties. Stella wants to find out why her family left the island she loved so suddenly, if their leaving is connected to the body, and why they moved there in the first place. Stella goes back to the island to try to reconnect with the people she hasn't seen in 25 years, against the wishes of her older sister Bonnie who hated the island and doesn't want to return.

The book is a page-turner. There are a lot of interesting and troubbled characters and I really wanted to find out what had happened. It's a crime novel but the investigation takes a back seat to the personal questions Stella is trying to answer.