Stranded - Emily Barr

To continue with the “Summer Holiday Reads” theme, here is a review of a brilliant psychological thriller set on a deserted island in the middle of the ocean off the coast of Malaysia. It will have you looking over your shoulder as you bask in the sun!

Stranded – Emily Barr

After the breakdown of her marriage, Esther Lomax needs to escape. She is hoping a little R&R on the beaches and islands of Malaysia will be just the thing to help her de-stress and get on the road to recovery.

A couple of days into her holiday at the beach resort, Esther takes a boat day trip with six other holiday makers to have lunch, catch some sunshine and seek solitude on an uninhabited island. It is peaceful and quiet there and as they begin to set up the cooking facilities, the guide realises he has forgotten to bring some essential equipment for the day and decides to go back to collect what they need, promising to return within the hour.

The hour passes, then another hour, then the afternoon and then the day, but, neither the guide nor a boat returns to collect them. Slowly this group of strangers all begin to realise they are stranded together, in the middle of the ocean on a remote, uninhabited island without food and more importantly, without drinking water. The days pass by, tensions rise and secrets emerge and Ester and her companions are tested to the limit in order to survive. Will they ever see the mainland again? Esther begins to wonder; ‘if no-one knows you are missing, how can you be found?’

This book was sent to me by my lovely friend, Dot, from Dot Scribbles. It is not a book I would have picked up myself and what a shame that would have been because I loved every word of it and could not put it down once I started reading.

The storyline may sound familiar and even a little contrived; people stranded on an uninhabited island, nobody knows they are missing, they have to struggle for survival etc, but, this story is anything but contrived, each person has their own story and as time goes by more and more is revealed. It is packed with surprising twists and turns and even though I thought I had it all figured out towards the end, I was completely wrong about what was going on! So wrong, in fact, that I began reading it again as soon as I had finished to see where the clues were hidden along the way. They are not easy to find and it is a testimony to Emily Barr’s clever storytelling that this is such a great book and such a thrilling read.

If you like testing your powers of detection and enjoy stories about people in tense situations, then this is the book for you. I can highly recommend it as a classic summer read; one which may make you think twice about taking a boat trip anywhere!

9.8/10

The Perfect Ghost – Linda Barnes

When celebrities want to write their “Autobiography”, but, cannot write it themselves they call upon ghost writers like Em Moore and her partner, Teddy Blake. Under the pseudonym, T. E. Blakemore, Em is the writer and prefers to spend her days indoors listening to taped interviews with their current subject. Teddy is the charismatic, outgoing, charming other half of the partnership who is responsible for arranging, taping and conducting the interviews. He has received many accolades for his “writing” and is well known and trusted to do a good job, while Em, on the other hand, is not so well known, choosing to live in the shadows of her tiny apartment (which she rarely leaves) and of Teddy, who she adores.

When Teddy dies in a bizarre road accident, Em decides to finish their current work, an autobiography of Garrett Malcom, a reclusive and extremely famous film director whose star is still rising. First though, she has to get from her apartment in Boston to his Cape Cod home to do the final interviews. When she eventually gets there, after a terrifying journey, she finds Garrett to be a lot nicer and far more attractive than she had previously thought he would be. He notices her timidity immediately and is very kind to Em offering her a room in his house so she can slot into his hectic schedule and finish the interviews. Soon, it becomes clear to Em that there are troubling questions about the Malcom family fortune and their history is filled with a mystery which she believes Teddy was onto before he died. As Em digs deeper into the Malcom story, slowly but surely, things begin to unravel.

None of the characters in this book are quite what they seem and I found some of them quite disturbing. The story is narrated by Em as she has an on-going dialogue with the recently departed Teddy. She is a very shy and mousy character and it becomes clear how much she relied on Teddy as a link to the world outside. She cannot let him go even after he dies.

Other than what I have said already it is very difficult to add more detail here without giving too much away. What I will say though, is that it is a chilling tale and I was almost at the end of the book when I realised what was actually happening. Linda Barnes has written a clever thriller with lots of twists and turns in the plot. It is a real page turner and I couldn’t put it down. I still remember the “Oh My God” moment I had when I put two and two together and the shock that came with it.

If you like thrillers and stories which keep you wanting to know more and more this is the book for you.

9.8/10