A review by tessa_talbert
The Weekend Away by Sarah Alderson

3.0

⭐⭐⭐ for this one, folks and I'm still kind of hovering about it. I just don't think it was my cup of tea.

The Weekend Away is a fast-paced adult thriller focusing on a pair of friends who run away for a holiday in Lisbon together for some much-deserved rest and relaxation. Kate is rich, beautiful, and now very much on her way to divorced and looking to spread her wings. Orla is a new mother who is struggling with all of the new aspects of her life, her body, and her own mind. A holiday is just what these two childhood friends needed. But when Kate disappears, Orla searches desperately for her, following a near-nonexistent trail of breadcrumbs to find out what happened to her friend and clear her own name in the process.

There are times I find I am just not in the mood for a certain type of book. I like to put them down and come back later with fresh eyes to give them a fair shot because sometimes, it really is just me. Unfortunately, I came back to this several times and find that more than anything, the theme of this story is Envy.

I feel like this book is a perfect example of why a lot of people can struggle with the Adult genre as a whole. It is tiring to open an Adult novel and hear nothing but how unhappy grown-up life is. How people hate themselves, or their friends, or their children and spouses, how the world turns to a dull grey and there is no more happiness to be found, and it breeds jealousy and contempt so powerful that it often spills over into—all of this.

I read enough of the genre to know that some of these things are there for a reason. Content people don't usually turn to murder, but the sheer extent of Orla's jealousy of every single existing facet of Kate was exhausting and led me to wonder why they were friends at all if she disliked her so much. Orla was exceedingly naive, but her penchant for melodrama was what continuously threw me out of the story. If there was a trope to be found, it was thrown into this thing, and the execution had me rolling my eyes more than it had me excited to see the ending. The final 'gut-punch" was overshadowed almost entirely, once again, by Orla's dramatic and insincere-seeming reactions to her own thoughts. I just...It wasn't my thing.

Lovers of the genre and the juicy, campy, betrayal-based type of thriller will definitely enjoy this and I know it definitely will continue to find its audience. This one hits the shelves on 13 April 2021!

My thanks to Netgalley and the Publisher for granting me this ARC in exchange for my honesty review.