M. J. Arlidge and Steph Broadribb
Orion, 5 September 2024
Available as: PB, 304pp audio, e
Source: Advance e-copy
ISBN(PB): 9781398716575
I'm grateful to the publisher for sgiving me access to an advance e-copy of The Reunion to consider for review, and to Tracy and Compulsive Readers for inviting me to join the book's blogtour.
Oh this one is very good.
It's set in the town of Whitecross, somewhere in the English Chiltern Hills. I think I know where the real Whitecross is - that isn't of course its actual name - and the authors bring to life the character of this district, protected for its natural beauty and riddled with twee little villages, but also full of new housing estates and also surpsingly deprived town centres where depressed youth find an escape in the time honoured ways: drink, drugs and sex.
This is Jennie Whitmore's world. Jennie never left Whitecross: her dreams of doing so shattered when her beloved friend Hannah vanished as they were on the cusp of escape. Instead, Jennie has hung around, and decades later she is a DI in the same town. Interesting - did she simply lose heart and never leave? Or, unconsciously, did she hang around, choosing a career that might one day give her an opportunity to find out what happened to Hannah? If so, she is still shocked when that possibility crystallises. This occurs suspiciously soon after her unwise experiment of joining in a school reunion. (Personally, I stay away from such things). Has the reunion jolted something among the little group of "friends"? Or was the clock already ticking?
The resulting investigation will see Jeannie throwing away beliefs she's held for three decades, taking uncharacteristic risks, and running into danger. I found it absolutely gripping how she justified, and undertook, an investigation she absolutely shouldn't be part of (her closest friend!) and the effect that doing so has on her relationships with her colleagues (she hardly has any friends). The impact of what is discovered, and Hannah's way of opening it up, will shatter the little group who see themselves as Hannah's mates from all those years ago, bring secrets into the open, and change Whitecross for ever.
It will also change Hannah's life. This is not a story - at least I don't think it is - that can kick off a series of small-town mysteries. I can't see Hannah returning to this dark Midsommer any time soon. Too mush will have changed. I did though find myself desperately hoping that things would turn out well for her in the end, I don't recall a recent main character I've so wished would come through unscathed - though this seems increasingly unlikely as the story proceeds...
Arlidge and Broadribb are at the top of their game (their games?) in this collaboration, a book that demands to be read in a single sitting if you can possibly manage that.
For more information about The Reunion, see the publisher's website here - and of course the other stops on the blogtour which you can see listed on the poster below.
You can buy The Reunion from your local high street bookshop or online from Bookshop UK, Hive Books, Blackwell's, Foyle's, WH Smith, or Waterstones.
Sounds fab. Going on my list.
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