Beautiful ugly

Review by Booklist Review

This may be Feeney's most delightfully chilling thriller yet, following a clutch of best-sellers that includes Sometimes I Lie (2018), His & Hers (2020), and Rock Paper Scissors (2021). Here, Feeney mixes gothic atmosphere on a remote Scottish isl not one, but two possibly unreliable narrators; a woman who may or may not be dead; and a plot that delivers suspense like an IV drip. The protagonists are both writers living in a thatched roof cottage near the sea on the south coast of England. Husband Grady Green is a fiction writer; wife Abby is an investigative journalist. Grady is on the phone with Abby when she leaves her car after witnessing an accident--and then she disappears. One year later, Grady's life in tatters, he accepts his agent's offer of a writing cabin on an island. The residents are a bit strange, informing him that no one ever leaves the island, and communicating with each other solely by walkie-talkies. The bulk of the narration belongs to Grady, with some shards of Abby's therapy sessions before she went missing. Grady's increasingly eerie experiences on the island intensify the suspense. Is he just unraveled by grief, or is he being hunted? A completely immersive puzzle.

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.

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Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Feeney (Good Bad Girl) stumbles with this hackneyed tale of a grieving mystery author who seeks solace on a remote Scottish island. A year after bestseller Grady Green's wife, Abby, disappears, his life hits the skids--he hardly sleeps, he's late on delivering his new novel, and his financial troubles force him to move into "the worst hotel in London." Salvation comes via Grady's agent, Kitty, who offers him the use of her deceased client's cabin on the secluded Isle of Amberley. On the ferry over, Grady thinks he sees Abby; soon, his hallucinations worsen, and he grows wary of the frosty locals. With zero cell service, no car, and a variety of macabre surprises waiting in his cabin, it takes Grady a while to notice Amberley's conspicuous absence of birds--and men. Feeney assembles her plot from familiar parts: elements of The Wicker Man, Gone Girl, and Shutter Island jostle for space among flat descriptions ("The house... is enormous, by far the biggest I've seen on the island. It should have been called the Big House on the Hill") and flatter characters. Worse, her trademark twists are more far-fetched than ever. It's a letdown. Agents: Kari Stuart, CAA, and Johnny Gellar, Curtis Brown U.K. (Jan.)

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

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Review by Kirkus Book Review

Following the mysterious disappearance of his wife, a struggling London novelist journeys to a remote Scottish island to try to get his mojo back--but all, of course, is not what it seems. Grady Green hits the pinnacle of his publishing career on the same night that his life goes off the rails--first his book lands on theNew York Times bestseller list, and then his wife, Abby, goes missing on her way home. A year later, Grady is a mere shadow of his former self: out of money and out of ideas. So, when his agent, Abby's godmother, suggests that he spend some time on the Isle of Amberly, in a log cabin left to her by one of her writers, it seems as good a plan as any. With free housing for himself and his dog and a beautiful, distraction-free environment, maybe he can finally complete the next novel. But from the very beginning, Grady's experiences with Amberly seem weird, if not downright ominous: As a visitor, he's not allowed to bring his car onto the island; the local businesses are only open for a few hours at a time; and there are no birds. At all. Not to mention the skeletal hand he finds buried under the floorboards of the cabin, the creepy harmonica music in the woods, and the occasional sighting of a woman in a red coat who's a dead ringer for Abby. As Grady falls deeper and deeper into insomnia and alcoholism, he begins to realize his being on the island is no accident--and that should make him very afraid. Through occasional chapters from before Abby's disappearance, told from her point of view, we learn that Grady is not necessarily a reliable narrator, and the book's slow unfolding of dread, mystery, and then truth is both creative and well-paced. Every chapter heading is an oxymoron, like the title, reminding us of the contradictions at the heart of every story. "Nasty little fellows…always get their comeuppance," a movie character once said. Deeply satisfying. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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