Read This Book…

Alison is a thirtysomething artist living a reclusive life in the small town she grew up in, painting commissions. When a wildfire nearly destroys her home and takes Alison’s life, she’s incredulous to be alive. When she discovers a strange car in her driveway with a dead woman inside, killed by the radiant heat, she’s horrified. But that horror turns into fear when she discovers her own name and address on a piece of paper with the woman. Alison can’t imagine why a stranger would be seeking her out, but when she starts her own investigation, it leads to a past she’d rather forget and a mystery she can’t ignore.

This book has all the markers of a great psychological thriller — a protagonist with a secret past, a natural disaster that forces a community to a breaking point, and lots of secrets. The writing has a literary edge that is very absorbing, and while Alison has her secrets, the writing is such that I never felt as though secrets were being kept from the reader for the sake of keeping secrets. On the surface, it feels like a thriller about paranoia, fear, and survival, but if you dig deeper, it’s a chilling account about obsession and how far one woman will go to protect herself. The environmental aspect of the story — the wildfires that affect the entire community — goes hand in hand with Alison’s story. It’s a metaphor for how something terrible and large can happen to you, and there is no ducking it: you can’t run from it, and it destroys everything in its path. The only thing to do is face the fallout and try to get ahead of it. The book weaves flashbacks and present tension well, and I genuinely wasn’t sure how it would be resolved. Overall, this was a great pick if you’re looking for a standalone Australian-set psychological thriller in the vein of Jane Harper!