Hello hello and welcome or welcome back to my little bookish corner of the internet. Today I’m sharing my book review of Daisy Darker, which was the book blogger group read for January.
Synopsis
Daisy Darker’s family were as dark as dark can be, when one of them died all of them lied and pretended not to see . . .
Daisy Darker is arriving at her grandmother’s house for her eightieth birthday. It is Halloween, and Seaglass – the crumbling Cornish house perched upon its own tiny private island – is at one with the granite rocks it sits on. The Darker family haven’t all been in the same place for over a decade, and when the tide comes in they’ll be cut off from the rest of the world for eight hours. When the tide goes back out, nothing will ever be the same again, because one of them is a killer . . .
Review
There were several of us in this group read, and absolutely none of us stuck to the reading schedule… Because we couldn’t put the book down. I read most of it in one day while I was getting my hair done, squinting at it without my glasses on, because I just had to know what was coming next.
With thrills and touches like that of And Then There Were None (which even gets an honourable mention by one of the characters), the whole setting is a wonder for a locked room mystery. A group of family members, with messy dynamics, in a house where they can’t leave for eight hours? Perfect for the murders to begin…
What was so great about this book was that pretty much every character is dislikable. Some are worse than others, but you don’t take a particular love to anyone, even the protagonist. It’s a risky move, writing a book like that, and it paid off so well here. That combined with the poetry that ripped everyone to pieces, laying their flaws out to see…. there honestly was no predicting who was going to be killed next. Or who was doing the killing.
This was my first five star read of the year, and it was so well deserving of those stars. Painfully sharp, brutal at times, yet still managing to be witty and engrossing, this is a book to pick up only when you have no plans for a few hours, because you won’t put it down once you start.
Thanks for stopping by for this review. Be sure to come back again soon for a variety of posts, from reviews to author interviews, and all things bookish in between.
And On She Reads 