#BookReview – Our House by Louise Candlish (@TeamBatc @Louise_Candlish)

On a bright January morning in the London suburbs, a family moves into the house they’ve just bought in Trinity Avenue. 
Nothing strange about that. Except it is your house. And you didn’t sell it. 

When Fiona Lawson comes home to find strangers moving into her house, she’s sure there’s been a mistake. She and her estranged husband, Bram, have a modern co-parenting arrangement: bird’s nest custody, where each parent spends a few nights a week with their two sons at the prized family home to maintain stability for their children. But the system built to protect their family ends up putting them in terrible jeopardy. In a domino effect of crimes and misdemeanors, the nest comes tumbling down.

Now Bram has disappeared and so have Fiona’s children. As events spiral well beyond her control, Fiona will discover just how many lies her husband was weaving and how little they truly knew each other. But Bram’s not the only one with things to hide, and some secrets are best kept to oneself, safe as houses. 

Published 5th April 2018 by Simon and Schuster (UK)

Imagine coming home to find strangers moving into your home? All your furniture has gone and they insist they now own it. Imagine then finding out that maybe this isn’t some kind of misunderstanding and your husband may well be behind it. That’s what happens to Fiona, when after a couple of days away she arrives back at her beloved house to find the life she knew entirely turned upside down.

I mean, how’s that for a hook? Within a couple of pages Louise Candlish sets the scene of a domestic nightmare and piques the intrigue of the reader. There was little doubt I was going to devour this book. I had to know what the hell was going on! Through Fiona’s podcasts and Bram’s desperate and tortured word documents the full horror is revealed.

What’s so fascinating about this book is that it’s both far fetched and believable in equal measures. On one hand, how the hell can a house be sold from beneath you? Yet, as we are taken deeper into the story and the full extent of the situation is revealed, it becomes more and more plausible.

Fiona and Bram’s marriage is crumbling after Fiona discovers her husband has cheated again. In a grown up attempt to maintain the lifestyle and beloved home of their children, Fiona suggests the completely modern approach of ‘birds nest’ parenting, where the children will remain where they are and it’ll be the parents who move in and out for their allocated contact time. It’s one of those concepts that sound great in theory right? But you can see the disaster waiting to happen right from the start, almost like watching through your fingers.

The problems begins when Bram – impulsive, deceitful and weak, gets a speeding ticket. What begins as a slight misdemeanor turns into a snowball of lies, tragedy, panic, manipulation and blackmail. I thought Louise Candlish captured the runaway-train-out-of-control effect fantastically, as Bram’s life literally spirals and he finds himself deeper and deeper in a situation he can’t get out of. I wanted to scream at him STOP!! I also thought Fiona’s character contrasted brilliantly against him, coming across as calm and capable, completely reasonable yet unable to see what was happening around her.

Our House really is a story of one lie leading to another and events which spiral out of control. It’s a roller-coaster at times, fueled with adrenaline and increasingly frenzied panic,  an intensifying sense of foreboding and an ending to leave you gasping in horror.  This is the very best kind of domestic noir – where the reader feels like an outsider looking in, can see the cracks and sense the impending doom but just doesn’t know how it will all unravel. Reading it to find out was an absolute joy of speeding pages and held breaths. I was gripped throughout and just couldn’t tear myself away.

(I read an advance e-copy courtesy of the publisher and Netgalley)