This was the third book I bought in Waterstones in Peterborough and I read it near the end of July. I've read other books by Claire Douglas and I was intrigued by the premise of this book so I got it. My cousin's wife saw it when I'd bought it and expressed interest, so I passed it on to her when I was done. I hope she liked it more than I did. I didn't hate it, but I only gave it three out of five stars so there was obviously something that didn't gel with me. It's a while since I read it but I will try to cast my mind back...
The book is about Imogen, a woman in her thirties who has been working as a journalist but she's suspended at the moment due to something that happened with one of her investigations. She is I think married to Josh, who is a tiresome human being that I disliked from the off. Some of his actions were really abusive so I would give a trigger warning for that. Imogen gets the unexpected news that she has been left a massive house in Bath in the will of a woman called Dorothea.
Dorothea is an artist and has had a successful career, but the house went up in flames and a lot of her artwork was destroyed. But Imogen finds a box addressed to her and realises Dorothea is trying to tell her something about her own past as well as what happened to Dorothea. Imogen hasn't seen Dorothea since she was sixteen, half her lifetime ago, when her mother left her dad and took Imogen with her. They stayed with Dorothea and she helped them, but Imogen's mother went back to Imogen's dad, and he is now serving time for her murder. Imogen has had a difficult life because of this, but is very close to her sister.
She starts trying to unravel what happened to Dorothea. There's a weird neighbour who is a bit too friendly, and there's a hunky next door neighbour who Imogen remembers from the summer she was sixteen. Dorothea's studio yields nothing but then there's a hidden bunker in the garden which does. There are three friends of Dorothea's who know a lot about what happened with Imogen's parents, but they are under threat too.
I liked the sense of threat in the book a lot, but Imogen drove me mad by making stupid mistakes and decisions. Josh is a proper dickhead to her. I thought it was a bit slow in parts, too. I think maybe my time with Claire Douglas is up as I don't find her that interesting.
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