Digital Reads Reviews

Many thanks to publisher Bookouture for my spot on this Blog Tour.

What games we play to survive!! Human beings are funny creatures. Our minds work in so many different ways that it often leaves me flabbergasted. One such view of human nature was this book by author Jennifer Harvey. A family drama with suspense and death of a teen pulled me gently like the waves of the sea.

Isa joined or rather was dumped by her parents on the neighbors on their summer vacation. Louise and her husband took her along to their house by the sea. After all, she was her daughter Katie’s best friend and son James had a crush on her. But only Katie knew of Isa’s troubled existence. Things appeared normal until Isa’s body was found washed on the beach.

My first book by this author, the story was long winding where I got to know the past present, and secret lives of all the female characters. The fact that they all portrayed to be good while playing many mind games had me cackling with joy.

But the story was extremely slow moving with many ruminations by all the characters. Multiple POVs gave me a rounded picture of their inner psyche, while keeping the truths in the shadows. The human mind truly shies away from certain truths. If we didn’t admit it, it wasn’t real. Author Jennifer Harvey brought that out well.

I enjoyed the story purely because I had many many theories of what could have happened prior to Isa’s deaths. I was correct at one aspect, and the others gave me a start. Oooh I never saw those secrets hidden behind the others. The author was quite cunning in showing me partial truths.

A fun book.

I received a ARC from NetGalley and the publisher, and this is my journey into its pages, straight from the heart!! STRICTLY HONEST AND UNBIASED.

All my reviews can be read here

They’d left their daughter with us, their only child, and we hadn’t protected her. That was all they would see when they looked at us—that we had failed them.

I count down the days until we can leave the city behind and return to the beach house. Where James and Katie can roam free over the dunes, like they did as children, and Peter will swap his 6 a.m. starts for the stacks of fluffy pancakes he lovingly serves up for our family breakfasts. These sun-drenched, golden days, just the four of us, are what I hold on to all year long.

But this summer Katie’s best friend will be coming with us. I tell myself the girls will have fun together, pushing aside the doubts I have about this uninvited guest. Isa. With her corn-silk hair and luminous skin, who manages to overshadow my daughter at every turn. Who has been dumped on us by her own parents, too caught up in their petty dramas to see what is right in front of them.

Because I can see it. There is something dangerous about Isa. Something more than a carefree girl, testing boundaries as she approaches adulthood. She threatens to cast storm clouds across my beach house days. I feel as powerless to stop her as I would in the face of a hurricane.

By the end of the summer, Isa will be dead. And I will have to face her mother. I don’t know if I will be able to find the words. How can I begin to explain that she never really knew her daughter at all?

Publication Date: June 2020

Amazon

https://geni.us/B08626LL52Social

Apple

https://apple.co/2IZIh8M

Kobo

http://bit.ly/33tvzZv

Google

http://bit.ly/2IUX3hc