The Cliff House: One hen weekend, seven secrets… but only one worth killing for

£9.495
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The Cliff House: One hen weekend, seven secrets… but only one worth killing for

The Cliff House: One hen weekend, seven secrets… but only one worth killing for

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Price: £9.495
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Jen is soon to be married to Zaki and she has booked a very luxurious retreat for her hen weekend. She is joined at this remote Scottish island by a few friends from the tennis club (Nicolette and Kennedy), two of her oldest friends (Helena and Michelle), her soon to be sister-in-law Samira and Beattie, the sister-in-law of her first marriage to Jason. I have enjoyed a number of Chris Brookmyre's books so enthusiastically, applied for a review copy of The Cliff House (2022). The isolated-place murder mystery is one I’ve always enjoyed, and I’ve liked quite a few of Brookmyre’s books in the past, so I thought it would be fun to give this one a try. Our isolated place is a small Scottish island with a luxury manor house that is rented out for retreats and small gatherings. This time it’s a weekend-long hen party before Jen’s wedding to her fiancé Zaki. Instead of a close circle of friends, she’s invited women from various stages of her life, from her childhood to her young adulthood, and including her sister-in-law-to-be, Samira, and her sister-in-law from her first marriage, Beattie. Some of these women already know each other and some don’t. Two, in particular, know each other and have bad blood between them from when one, Michelle, dumped her bandmates, including Helena, to become a solo act, going on to fortune and celebrity. It also turns out that Beattie is hostile to Jen, thinking that she wrongfully accused her first husband and Beattie’s brother, Jason, of being mixed up in criminal activity before he disappeared 10 years earlier.

Then came reveal after reveal, each more ridiculous than the previous one and had me rolling my eyes as the story descended into an over the top, ridiculous story. It was all just too much and totally ruined the book for me. It felt like the author was throwing out absolutely everything he could think of into one story. They say that confession is good for the soul, in this case it’s a restitution, a price for absolution but for what? It’s Jens hen weekend in a luxury Cliff House located on Clachan Geal a tiny island south of Barra in the Outer Hebrides. Guests include her childhood friends as well as her future sister-in-law and a new friend of the last few months. Each of them has reasons to be uncomfortable about at least one of their companions and following a couple of dramatic incidents they are told the price of their freedom is confession. It becomes a game of survival.Chris Brookmyre is a prolific author of crime fiction and one half of the highly successful Ambrose Parry writing partnership along with his wife Marisa Haetzman. He read adult fiction and devoured Tolkien, Douglas Adams and Ian Fleming’s books– “young adult fiction hadn’t been invented yet,” he points out.

Marissa and I did an Ambrose Parry event at Conversations on The Coast about this time last year and we were really quite taken by it – it was a full house and we had a really warm response.” To celebrate her upcoming second marriage, Jen has organized a bachelorette party to end all parties. Stealing away with six of her friends, she’s booked an exclusive mansion on a posh private island off the coast of Scotland. Flown out by a private helicopter, they land to find the accommodations just as marvelous as promised. The only hitch is one that they easily overlook upon arrival. As stunning as the locale is, they’re on a remote island with only one way off—and they’re so very far from home.The extent to which you might enjoy this convoluted and twisty tale will very much depend on your willingness to suspend disbelief. The initial set up is a little far fetched however at around the halfway point it stretches the bounds of credulity to beyond breaking point, and by the conclusion it's just plain ludicrous. I just don't know about this one, it seems both character and actions-wise the book a tad too convoluted. It was a tad too much to be able to tie it with a neat bow at the end. Messy! Conversations on the Coast has a slightly different format to other literary festivals. with one author talk a week, spread out over a month rather than a cluster of events. As well as Jen, there’s the pop diva and the estranged ex-bandmate, the tennis pro and the fashion guru, the embittered ex-sister-in-law and the mouthy future sister-in-law.

As we talk on the phone, he is preparing for an event in Edinburgh with his appearance at Conversations on the Coast coming up next week. There will be others that’ll lap this one up but I was frankly glad to survive it and battle my way through to the end. There are some clever twists and interesting moments but overall I’m afraid it didn’t really work for me: just too complicated, too contrived and way too unlikely. Chris Brookmyre's latest psychological thriller is set on Clachan Geal, a small remote Scottish island on the edge of the Atlantic, a beautiful, windswept place on which is located an exclusive, luxurious and expensive mansion for hire, with attractions such as an infinity pool and golf course. Jen is a successful business woman who has recently sold Muffin Finer, although she remains the head of the company, leaving her an extremely wealthy woman. She is engaged to be married for the second time to her fiance, Zaki Hussain, although she has a few niggles about him. She has booked the island mansion from the owner, property developer, single mother Lauren, for the celebration of her hen night with a group of female friends, each of whom it is trailed from the beginning, are women with closely guarded secrets. In theory a hen party should be the chance for the bride to celebrate with all the people she loves around her, but the reality can be different. “Once I put them all in a room together I began to get to know how they would behave. When one of the party mysteriously goes missing on the first night, Jennifer realizes she has made a terrible mistake: she has assembled this disparate bunch of women and the only thing they have in common is her . . .The chapters alternate between the viewpoints of each of the protagonists and, when they split up in search of the kidnapped woman, each begins to wonder if they’ve been paired with the intended target, but, at the same time, guiltily accepting the target could be them. I feel like the twist in the book was good and there were believable red herrings leading up to that point. I could have done without so much of the inner monologues and the dynamics between characters, as they took me out of the action sometimes. I found Jen to be a mostly likable character, and felt like I understood the intentions of all of the characters, which seemed realistic even if not likable. The end of the book tied up everything a bit too neatly in my opinion but I didn’t hate it. The characters were cool, I learned a lot about them, which was kind of the point. But I felt like some of their motivations and choices were not fully believable and that's ok, I have no issue with suspending my belief, but - something it was a little too far-fetched how serious things were are how everyone just seemed so ok to forgive and forget so easily, no questions asked.



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