Genre: Mystery/Thriller
23-year-old Catherine is mainly interested in Facebook and flirting, but she reluctantly takes a job at a local care home after her mother puts her foot down - and soon discovers that her new workplace contains many secrets. One of the residents at the home, 82-year-old Rose, is convinced that something sinister is going on in Room 7 and that her own life is under threat. But Rose has dementia - so what does she actually know, and who would believe her anyway? As Catherine starts investigating Rose's allegations, terrible revelations surface about everyone involved. Can Catherine find out what's really going on?
***
Review: Foof, where to begin with this one.
What made me pick it up was the description I had heard of it as being extremely dark. If your book is extremely dark, I'm sold, I will read it, and I want to be horrified. It took quite a while to get there, and I did spend quite a bit of time wondering if everyone around me isn't simply possessed of very delicate constitutions when it comes to their reading. But then it got there. Oh ho, did it get there.
I really didn't like Catherine at all, but that wasn't enough to put me off the novel. I wasn't hugely keen on Rose, either, but that also didn't put me off. That neither character did, is a testament to the writing, and ultimately, the plot. Immensely readable and compelling, even when I felt it was a little underwhelming I was still enjoying it enough to tear through it. And then when it ramped up the darkness, it crossed the line into awesome. It really pulls no punches towards the end, and turned out to be a far more disturbing premise than I ever would have imagined.
I did feel like it was a tad disjointed, in that I felt Catherine and her mother could have had their own book, Rose could have had her own 'Elizabeth Is Missing' style book, and the plot could have been a third book. However, I must say that the way everything wraps up in the end is superb. Nothing is irrelevant, not a single thing, which is an accomplishment for a book with such detailed nuances. By the end, despite my restlessness for the first half of the book, I was thoroughly satisfied. I'm sticking with a 4 star rating, though, because it did take a while to get going for me.
I have every intention of reading everything else written by this author.
Rating: 4/5
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