Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Mara (Someone in the Attic) delivers a rattling domestic thriller set in the glossy South Dublin neighborhood of Oakpark. At the outset, exhausted schoolteacher and new mother Susan O'Donnell accidentally sends a snarky text meant for her sisters to a WhatsApp group used by her entire housing estate. The message--which insinuates that snobby queen bee Celeste Geary's husband, Warren, is cheating on her with a "PR Girl"--immediately sends a shockwave through the neighborhood, but a mortified Susan hopes the whole thing will blow over quickly. Instead, it leads to several acts of shocking violence. By the end of the novel, four people are dead, and most Oakpark dwellers--including brooding bartender Venetia and Susan's sister, Greta--have been swept up in at least one scandal they've tried to keep buried. Mara sets a relentless pace from the moment Susan sends her fateful text message. Readers will hold their breath as the plot's puzzle pieces click into place, exhaling only after the absurdly satisfying finale. It's a blast. Agent: Catherine Wood, Felicity Bryan Assoc. (Jan.)
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Review by Library Journal Review
In Mara's (Someone in the Attic) domestic suspense novel, new mother Susan O'Donnell makes a simple mistake that ends up turning her world upside down. She thinks she's sending a text to her sisters in which she airs the dirty laundry of a neighboring family, but instead she accidentally sends the message to the neighborhood WhatsApp group. The group chat immediately explodes, and things quickly spiral out of control. Susan begins to receive death threats, and a brick is thrown through her baby's bedroom window. She's sure the furor will die down, until a woman is found dead in a house that bears the same address as Susan's, but in a different development across town. Soon after, a couple is found murdered in Susan's neighborhood, and she no longer feels safe in her home. The ripple effect of the text keeps expanding, touching not only Susan's family but her two sisters' families as well. VERDICT Though the intricate plot becomes a bit disjointed with multiple narrators and a timeline that jumps back and forth over 10 days, Mara's novel is a good pick for fans of Lisa Jewell or B. A. Paris.--Jean King
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
An accidental "reply all" leads to violence and tragedy in an affluent suburban neighborhood. Susan O'Donnell has a four-month-old baby and never gets enough sleep. One day, after checking her neighborhood WhatsApp group, she sends her two sisters a snarky message about Celeste Geary, "mistress of pointy comments," intending to vent her frustration at Celeste's latest passive-aggressive post and including insinuations about her husband, daughter, and son: "Urgh. I know. I'm awful. I just needed to get that out of my system." Several minutes later, she gets panicked replies from Leesa and Greta: Susan has sent the message to the whole neighborhood group chat. By the time she manages to delete it, it's already been screenshotted and shared around the neighborhood and beyond, and reactions have been put in motion that will result in a brick through a window; a kidnapping; the revelation of at least one extramarital affair; attempted murder; and multiple deaths. To Mara's credit, she paces the drama perfectly; even as things escalate to an extreme degree, she switches narrators and perspectives frequently enough to prolong a sense of mystery, but not so much that it feels fragmented. At the center of it all is Susan, who's dealing with her own struggles as a mother as well as the guilt and shame she feels for saying publicly those things that were meant for private consumption. Her humanity grounds the tension, even as the plot threatens at times to spill into the realm of absurd and sensational. No character emerges unscathed, a sobering reminder that secrets--whether harmless or not--rarely stay buried, particularly when they can be broadcast with a single click. An entertaining cautionary tale in the age of digital gossip and social media. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
