Publication Date: May 2018 from Williams and Whiting
Source: Review Copy
A missing girl.
Threatening notes.
Sinister strangers.
Olivia’s idyllic family life in a Swiss mountain village is falling apart. She thought she’d managed to escape the past, but it’s coming back to haunt her.
Has somebody discovered her secret – why she had to leave Scotland more than ten years ago?
And what is her connection to Marie, a lonely schoolgirl in a Yorkshire seaside town, and Lucy, a student at a Scottish university?
A twisty family mystery with a dark edge, where nothing is as it seems.
A Fractured Winter is one of those novels with a premise that I always find intriguing – past actions impacting on a present life, family secrets and a twisty sense of character.
Alison Baillie weaves an atmospheric sense and an unpredictable vibe into her multiple character arc – as we learn about Olivia whose perfect life in the Swiss mountains is about to fall apart. Meanwhile we have Marie, a fish out of water in her own family in Yorkshire and Lucy, an introspective university student in the 80’s and 90’s respectively. How these stories weave together to form Olivia’s current reality is at the heart of A Fractured Winter.
This authors sense of place is stunning, beautifully described so the reader lives it with the characters. She keeps the unpredictability nicely edgy, this is a dark family drama with page turning appeal. Add in a creepy hotel, a sense of disquiet and a cleverly divisive character in Olivia and you have a really wonderful read that goes by fast.
Compelling and wonderfully written, A Fractured Winter, like the authors previous novel Sewing the Shadows Together, comes highly recommended by me.
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Happy Reading!
Thanks Liz for this wonderful review x