Blackthorn Ashes was a housing estate near Cornwall, overlooking the sea, but due to poor planning, six weeks after they moved into their new builds, six people died from carbon monoxide poisoning. The whole estate had to be abandoned and sits empty, with people’s things still inside, just the way they left them on evacuation. Finding refuge in a local caravan park, the disgraced Gale family waits the outcome of the police investigation into what happened. Agnes Gale, the autistic adult daughter of one of the developers, survived living there, and decides to try and find answers to some of the questions the tragedy has raised, but in the process she stirs up secrets that some would rather remained buried.

This psychological thriller is from the author of the DI Marnie Rome series, which is acclaimed, and Fragile, which we reviewed earlier HERE.

This book has an odd timeline that is a little confusing. It’s broken into two timelines, alternating, with chapter headings that countdown to before the abandonment and after. The countdown aspect is a little hard to follow and the split timeline doesn’t really add anything to the narrative as a whole. I think this kind of structure is a little overused lately, but that’s perhaps personal taste.

I really like this premise of the abandoned buildings holding secrets, and them being located by the sea in Cornwall sounds like an explorers dream. That sounds like a fascinating thing to see, almost like Roanoke, everything just left behind like that. I didn’t realise that this exploration was going to be right after the events of the deaths of the families. On reading the blurb of the book, I thought it was going to take place some time later. This way is a little less cool. The place is less mysterious and exciting, and a little more like a still active crime scene and exploring is less curious and more breaking and entering. People may still want their things that are in those houses that Agnes walks through with her little brother. That aside, this book has a wonderful sense of place and atmosphere, with descriptions that give a feeling of a deadly fairytale, a dark Sleeping Beauty, with the houses having been named after thorn trees and a mysterious gas leak killing people in their sleep.

Something that bothered me a little bit with the premise of the book was that the UK has pretty thorough processes of permits and buildings applications and inspections. The author seems to have done some research into building and how that whole process is executed and things, but she never addresses how the building works were passed by council if they somehow were being built on land that was going to sink and leak gases into the homes. It is a flaw in the basic premise of the whole book. And I think that might really bother some readers.

The characters in this book are quite interesting. Agnes is a gay, autistic vegan who has psychotic delusions, so she’s the classic unreliable narrator that these books seem to love. I can’t say, due to lack of my own knowledge on the subject, whether she’s well written as an autistic character, but she certainly is interesting and has a unique perspective. I like that she’s a bit weird and different. Her younger brother seems to have some secrets of his own, and I liked that there were hints that he was a bit off too. My favourite character was a side character called Errol who lives with his grandmother in another caravan, and has a bit of flair for dramatic dressing and a kind heart. He’s a nice friend in this book.

I liked this book fine, overall. It’s just a little bit dull in parts. Not much happens for large parts of the book and some of what does was pretty easy to see coming. It seemed to go over the same ground a little bit. There was a twist in the end, but it felt more in the nature of this genre than really any surprise. I think the premise works mostly, but if it had leaned into the abandoned house theme more, and had more time pass before Agnes is visiting the houses and looking for answers, I think this would have dark a richer, darker, more mysterious tone. So it was an entertaining enough read, with a few flaws.

Read It If: you like psychological thrillers with unreliable narrators. This book ticks the diversity boxes and the abandoned houses and atmosphere add to the over all enjoyment.

Thank you to PGC Books for the copy of this book for review.