Max and Annie, with their 12 year old son, invite their old university friends and their families from London, to the dry run of their glamping site Wildernest in Cornwall. As fights break out between the children, the adults are soon embroiled in their own tensions with each other. When one of the group goes missing and a storm rolls in, isolating the families, tensions and secrets rise to the surface and each is intent on protecting their own, at all costs.

I sometimes am drawn to these stories where something sinister happens while families are camping because whilst tents are cute and the Great Outdoors is nice, there is something scary to me about camping. Probably because I went camping with my family when I was a kid and it was not great.

In this book, the story cute between the investigation by the police in the aftermath of events, the hospital room where one of the party is in ICU and the events of the weekend leading up to the person going missing. The chapters are all headed with a characters name, so we know whose perspective we are getting. I was feeling a bit cautious about this structure, there are a lot of characters to keep track of and there are different time lines, but in the end, I found it easy to follow. We don’t know what has happened and who is missing, or who is in the hospital at the start of the book, so the central mystery is about what happened as well as who did or knows what.

This one has been labelled propulsive reading by it’s marketing team and I think that’s a very apt word for it. It’s what I think of as a good fun read, in that it sets out to do something and achieves it. You buy this one thinking it’s going to be well paced and twisty, and it is. It’s one of those thrillers with loads of short chapters, which I really enjoy in this genre. It makes things fast and intriguing as you’re piecing things together. The little bits of backstory and plotting are dropped in at just the right time, so that you’re kept turning pages. There’s also a great deal of tension built. I read this one in two sittings.

Another thing I liked about this book was the different families. The group all knew each other in university, and it’s a few decades later. They have stayed in touch, which I like, but also they have all grown in different directions. This felt very real to me. Sometimes if we met our old friends today, we might not relate to them, but we have this shared history. For example, one family is quite laid back and hippy and another is a famous reality TV judge. The two fathers in this family are best friends really, but their goals and values have grown them in very different ways. That felt very relatable and real to me. A lot of the characters I didn’t really like or relate to, but all of them made sense and were interesting to read about. The history and dynamics between them made for some great twists and conflicts.

Overall, this book is well paced, intriguing, and a real page turner. If you’re looking for an entertaining thriller, then you might really like this one.

Read It If: you’re into Ruth Ware or Lucy Foley, this one is winding and mysterious, well paced and tense. You’ll stay up past your bedtime to read just one more chapter…

Thank you to Simon and Schuster Canada for the copy of this book for review.