Fiona Lawson’s fairy-tale life
comes to a screeching halt in this story of betrayal and fraud. She returns
home to find it isn’t hers anymore. Her house in the exclusive neighborhood—the
one she shares with her estranged husband in a co-parenting arrangement—now belongs
to someone else. And they claim she sold it to them!
This story is written in a unique
contemporary style, with the MC telling a lot of the story via a podcast titled
The Victim, complete with the typical
twitter comments following each episode. A sign of the times? Add that to the Word
document/suicide note penned by the estranged spouse, along with conventional
chapters having POVs of the MC and of her husband, and you get quite an
interesting read. Can’t say if I’d like to read this style a lot, but it was
certainly fun.
The story centers around an
unfaithful husband and his traffic citations. You read that right. Somehow this
author manages to take a mundane topic like a speeding ticket and turn it into
a full-length suspense that held my interest to the very “OMG” ending! And I
mean that literally. The last three paragraphs of the book floored me! I can’t
tell you the emotion I was feeling without spoiling the last twist, so I’ll
just say, “Wow.”
There were places in the story
where I thought it seemed a bit far-fetched, but then the author threw in a
little back-story to make me buy it. Many of the twists and turns (and there
were plenty) knocked me for a loop! I loved the way Candlish exposed the
different characters’ motivations as the story unfolded.
The characters were developed,
and the pace was good.
This is a British novel, not my
favorite, but I tried to ignore that in my rating. I also tried to ignore the
foul language. It’s hard to say if it was excessive. There was a lot, but it
was true to character in those places. Structurally, I wasn’t crazy about the writing.
I struggled with how to rate
this one but ended up giving Our House
4 stars (with an asterisk for language and content) because I really did enjoy
reading it. Three didn’t seem like enough, and the ending alone was worth at
least an extra half.
I received a
complimentary copy of this book from
Berkley
Publishing Group via NetGalley.
Opinions
expressed in this review are completely my own.
