Author: Gillian McAllister
Year published: 2025
Category: Adult fiction (thriller)
Pages: 528 pages
Rating: 4 out of 5
Location: (my 2025 Google Reading map): UK
Summary: It is June 21st, the longest day of the year, and new mother Camilla’s life is about to change forever. After months of maternity leave, she will drop her infant daughter off at daycare for the first time and return to her job as a literary agent. Finally. But, when she wakes, her husband Luke isn’t there, and in his place is a cryptic note.
Then it starts. Breaking news: there's a hostage situation developing in London. The police arrive, and tell her Luke is involved. But he isn't a hostage. Her husband - doting father, eternal optimist - is the gunman.
What she does next is crucial. Because only she knows what the note he left behind that morning says...
Review: I think it's clever to use a common phrase as a book title; it conjures up all sorts of thoughts before I start reading it. It took me a very long time to finish this book, but for no fault of the novel. Life has been so crazy busy (not necessarily in a good way), that I didn't have the time or energy to read for the past few weeks.
I did figure out the "who dunnit" part of this book quite a bit before the end, but I still enjoyed reading the last third. I liked that there were two narrators: Camilla, the wife of the gunman, and Niall, the hostage negotiator. Telling a story from two sides always appeals to me and this one was done well. Both characters are likable and believable.
The setting of this novel is also fun for me: London and particularly the neighborhood where my brother lives so I could picture where some of the action was taking place. All in all a good and entertaining novel.
Challenges for which this counts:
- Bookish--main character is an author
