THE OTHER WOMAN'S HOUSE - Sophie Hannah

My review of The Other Woman's House appeared in Shelf Awareness. I am reprinting it here with their permission.

First line: "I am going to be killed because of a family called the Gilpatricks."

Connie Bowskill logs onto a real estate website in the wee hours of the night after her husband is asleep. She is obsessed with a house in Cambridge and it has gone on the market. When she clicks on the virtual tour, she is mortified to see a dead woman lying in a pool of blood. She immediately summons her husband, but when he opens the virtual tour, there is no dead woman. Connie is determined to find the answer to this mystery because she isn’t crazy, she saw a dead woman. But her obsession with the house and with the mysterious dead woman may cost her everything.

Sophie Hannah (The Wrong Mother) employs vivid imagery and suspense to build a haunting atmosphere that envelops the reader. While the novel is set in England, it isn’t difficult to imagine the same scenario in your own neighborhood, making the reading experience that much more intimate.

The Other Woman’s House, progressively brings into focus a distorted world created by obsession. Alternating between first and third person points of view helps to keep the images blurry for the reader, knowing enough to make out shapes but not enough to clearly recognize what’s lying beneath the surface.

The Other Woman’s House produces a fascinating phenomenon similar to watching an accident. The darkness of a sick mind is chillingly terrifying, but readers will likely find it difficult to tear themselves away from the book until they reach the conclusion.

The Other Woman's House is available in trade paperback (ISBN: 978-0143121510) from Penguin Books.