A Game for All the Family

February 29, 2016
Former TV producer Justine Merrison, the narrator of this confusing standalone from Hannah (Woman with a Secret), leaves London for Devon, where she vows that doing nothing will be her new occupation. Justine’s opera singer husband, Alex, and their 14-year-old daughter, Ellen, settle in with her at Speedwell House. Trouble starts when Justine receives the first in a series of increasingly threatening phone calls from an anonymous woman, who purports to know something unsavory in her past. Meanwhile, Ellen is furiously writing a mystery story for school about the murderous Ingrey family, who live in a house suspiciously reminiscent of Speedwell. Justine worries about the tale’s grisly content, but she’s distracted by news from school that Ellen’s new best friend, George Donbavand, has been unfairly expelled. Later, the school authorities inform Justine that George doesn’t exist. In the first in a series of implausible plot twists, Justine discovers potential links between the mysterious Donbavand family and Ellen’s story. So much is going on that even dedicated readers will struggle to make sense of it all.

April 15, 2016

Justine Merrison, a former TV executive, along with her 14-year-old daughter, Ellen, and successful opera singer husband, Alex, move from London to the South Devon countryside. Justine, determined to recover from a hectic career that ended on a sour note, wants to leave it all behind and do "nothing." The family successfully settles in until Justine receives a series of seemingly crank phone calls from a woman with a lisp. With each call, though, it becomes clearer that the caller knows too much about Justine for this to be a case of mistaken identity. At the same time Justine notices that her relationship with Ellen is becoming strained. To find the cause she reads a writing assignment that had obsessed her daughter: a bizarre story, set in the Merrison home, of a young murderess named Perrine and the dysfunctional way her family tries to deal with her. Disturbed by a connection between the calls and the story, Justine begins what could turn into a perilous search for answers. VERDICT Hannah (Woman with a Secret) has written what could have been a thriller but is instead an odd combination of the suspenseful (Paula Hawkins's The Girl on the Train) and the satirical (Maria Semple's Where'd You Go, Bernadette?), with an unbelievable story line and characters whose behaviors are overwhelmingly far fetched, leaving readers befuddled.--Susan Santa, Shelter Rock P.L., Albertson, NY

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.