The Last Night at Tremore Beach

Starred review from December 12, 2016
English composer Peter Harper, devastated by divorce and deserted by his muse, travels to Ireland in hope of healing, in Spanish author Santiago’s hair-raising debut. Although inspiration remains elusive, Peter finds living in a remote seaside cottage in Clenhburran, Donegal, restorative. A promising new relationship with go-getter Judie Gallagher, who runs a shop and teaches yoga classes, is a plus. But then one stormy night, shortly before his son and daughter’s scheduled visit from their home in Amsterdam, Peter is struck by lightning while returning from a dinner party at the house of his neighbors, Leo and Marie Kogan. Excruciating headaches ensue, along with increasingly harrowing dreams. Are these hallucinatory visions of horrors that are befalling Judie, his beloved children, and even Marie and Leo just a bizarre effect of the lightning—or could Peter somehow be glimpsing the future? Weaving quicksilver supernatural strands into an evocative tapestry of rural Irish life, Santiago conjures a truly haunting page-turner. Agent: Bernat Fiol, SalmaiaLit (Spain).

December 15, 2016
A struggling composer tries to get away from it all at a remote Irish beach house, but a chance weather event seems to imbue him with special powers that give him disturbing views of future events. In Spaniard Santiago's English language debut, classical composer Peter Harper, reeling from a recent nasty divorce, relocates temporarily to County Donegal, Ireland, to the remote Tremore Beach near the tiny hamlet of Clenhburran. His only neighbors are Leo and Marie Kogan, an older, bohemian couple who live down the beach. Peter spends much of his time moping about how his creative juices have slowed to a trickle or acting surly when new acquaintances want to know about his past accomplishments. Everything changes one night when he's driving home from Leo and Marie's in a thunderstorm and gets struck by lightning. Considering his rather repugnant personality, readers may be disappointed that he survives with barely a physical scratch, though his mental state is another matter. Plagued first by excruciating headaches and then violent visions that are so real he's convinced an armed takeover of the house is imminent, Peter isn't sure if he's losing his mind or if the lightning has allowed him to tap into some sort of premonition-type power. His girlfriend-in-all-but-name, Judie Gallagher, suggests he see a sleep doctor, but this only intensifies the visions, and when his young children come to visit, Peter is convinced that something terrible is on the horizon, a certainty that the reader simply doesn't share, as Santiago doesn't do the necessary narrative work to either prove or disprove Peter's tenuous state of mind. A sadly squandered setting and a protagonist who's more abrasive than empathetic make for a lackluster story of things, real or imaginary, that go bump in the night.

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Starred review from February 1, 2017

Composer Peter Harper has taken shelter on Ireland's remote Tremore Beach to lick his wounds and regroup in the wake of a painful divorce. After dinner with neighbors one dark and stormy night, he's struck by lightning. Peter survives but suffers severe headaches and bizarre dreams. As his condition begins to blur the boundaries between nightmare and reality, the help he seeks from both friends and professionals provides little comfort and much confusion. Is Judie really the true love Peter craves? Can he protect his kids from his internal terrors? Should he stay at the blustery shore of Tremore or hightail it back to Amsterdam and the pain of being so close to his ex? VERDICT Santiago's debut ticks all the boxes for a first-rate thriller. Plausible characters, wonderful atmosphere, and a solidly written story with just enough scariness will keep readers engaged to the very last page. Admirers of Ruth Ware and Susan Hill will love it.--Susan Clifford Braun, Bainbridge Island, WA

Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

January 1, 2017
After a grueling divorce, acclaimed composer Peter Harper retreats to an isolated seaside cottage in Donegal to confront his creative stumbling blocks. Although he'd intended to find solitude, Peter makes fast friends with his nearest neighbors, Leo and Marie Kogan, and with Judie, the manager of a local hostel. Then, while driving home from a night at the Kogans' cottage, Peter barely survives being struck by lightning and is left with stabbing headaches and horrific sleepwalking nightmares. In these dreams, Peter watches helplessly as the Kogans, then Judie and his young children, are terrorized by a sadistic gang. Although he agrees to see a psychotherapist, Peter is convinced that he's begun experiencing the premonitions that haunted his mother. Desperate to forestall the attacks, Peter follows the clues his dreams reveal and soon begins to doubt everything he knows about his new friends. Santiago paints Tremore Beach in alternating strokes of lonely beauty and unpredictable danger, using the setting, hints of the supernatural, and Peter's possible mania to invoke unsettling paranoia.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)