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Saturday 10 October 2020

The Chalet by Catherine Cooper

 



Description from Goodreads:

"Four friends. One luxury getaway. The perfect murder.

French Alps, 1998

Two young men ski into a blizzard… but only one returns.

20 years later

Four people connected to the missing man find themselves in that same resort. Each has a secret. Two may have blood on their hands. One is a killer-in-waiting.

Someone knows what really happened that day.

And somebody will pay."


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For a debut novel, I think this worked pretty well and it was a nice, quick read.

The plot is set in two time frames - 1998 follows the story of the death of a young man whilst on a skiing holiday with his brother and their girlfriends.  Fast forward to 2020 and we find ourselves in the same ski resort, with a group of people who are somehow connected to that death.  It's told from multiple points of view so you do have to keep your wits about you but it does work well for the story.  In amongst this, we have a mystery narrator - that of a child and her difficult childhood spent in and out of foster care which I found heart breaking - how does she fit into the story?

I am not going to give away any of the plot or provide any spoilers as to do so would ruin it for others but what I will say is that I did see the twist coming from a mile away which took a bit of the suspense and head-scratching away somewhat.  Having said that, it is a very clever plot which did make me second-guess myself a couple of times but in the end, I was right.

The characters are thoroughly awful; I think if I was stuck with them, I'd do away with the lot of them!  I'm not sure whether it was the author's intention to make them so unlikeable but I felt it actually worked really well in the context of the story and I admit to secretly hoping something bad would befall them all!

Overall, this is a creditable debut and I will be looking out for more from this author in the future and I should thank HarperCollins UK / HarperFiction via NetGalley who invited me to read The Chalet in return for an unbiased review.


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