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A review by thebooktrail88
The Darkest Secret by Alex Marwood
4.0
A holiday home, a party, a missing child, a ‘ripped from the headlines’ novel
Spending time at a holiday home in Bournemouth with an influential bunch of people sounds like a nice premise but this group are never going to be your friends. They are rich, spoilt, self absorbed and their personalities are ‘unique’. The wealth and privilege they enjoy is evident from the holiday home at Sandbanks and the food and drink on offer. the way they speak, their attitude. Each has reacted differently to Coco’s disappearance. Now Sean has died, his fourth wife and all those left behind start to reveal their secrets, their memories of what that fateful weekend involved.
Two narratives, past and present, with the facade of happiness ripped up and revealed amongst a media frenzy, now a funeral in the Sandbanks community.
There is not too much I can or want to say about this book really for the fear of spoiling it. Largely character driven rather than location based as such, this is like looking inside a family, behind the facade of wealth and every kind of judgement that brings and really revealing piece by piece how other people live, how families cope with a disappearance of a young child and what this all means 12 years later. I can’t say I liked any one of the characters but then this is what makes the novel so fascinating. Parents partying whilst their little children look on, a house full of wealth but manipulation and devious secrets too. I’m always chilled in an Alex Marwood novel and this was no exception!
Spending time at a holiday home in Bournemouth with an influential bunch of people sounds like a nice premise but this group are never going to be your friends. They are rich, spoilt, self absorbed and their personalities are ‘unique’. The wealth and privilege they enjoy is evident from the holiday home at Sandbanks and the food and drink on offer. the way they speak, their attitude. Each has reacted differently to Coco’s disappearance. Now Sean has died, his fourth wife and all those left behind start to reveal their secrets, their memories of what that fateful weekend involved.
Two narratives, past and present, with the facade of happiness ripped up and revealed amongst a media frenzy, now a funeral in the Sandbanks community.
There is not too much I can or want to say about this book really for the fear of spoiling it. Largely character driven rather than location based as such, this is like looking inside a family, behind the facade of wealth and every kind of judgement that brings and really revealing piece by piece how other people live, how families cope with a disappearance of a young child and what this all means 12 years later. I can’t say I liked any one of the characters but then this is what makes the novel so fascinating. Parents partying whilst their little children look on, a house full of wealth but manipulation and devious secrets too. I’m always chilled in an Alex Marwood novel and this was no exception!