A five star thriller to get your week going …
Eden Fox, an artist on the brink of her big break, sets off for a run before her first exhibition. When she returns to the home she recently moved into, Spyglass, an enchanting old house in Hope Falls, nothing is as it should be. Her key doesn’t fit. A woman, eerily similar to her, answers the door. And her husband insists that the stranger is his wife.
One house. One husband. Two women. Someone is lying.
Six months earlier, a reclusive Londoner called Birdy, reeling from a life-changing diagnosis, inherits Spyglass. This unexpected gift from a long-lost grandmother brings her to the pretty seaside village of Hope Falls. But then Birdy stumbles upon a shadowy London clinic that claims to be able to predict a person’s date of death, including her own. Secrets start to unravel, and as the line between truth and lies blurs, Birdy feels compelled to right some old wrongs. (Goodreads Blurb)
The title immediately gave me a cheating scandal, but within the first few pages Alice Feeney waits no time in throwing you into the drama. I love when thriller authors are upfront that you shouldn’t trust them. You are immediately introduced to two characters claiming to be the same person. You know it can’t be true, but who is lying? Spoiler alert, everyone in this book is lying.
Which normally, having untrustworthy characters annoys me. Knowing that everyone has a secret and everyone’s lying, and everyone is basically unlikable, created kind of the perfect cast.
I devoured this book. I couldn’t get enough.
I’ve read every Alice Feeney book and is she building the reputation of creating the absolute best locations/settings? I feel so entertained and can easily picture the setting of Hope Falls. It’s like I have a map in my head and can see where all of the buildings lie in the beach and of course, the famous Spyglass house.
Just when you think you are getting a handle on the whirlwind that Ellis has thrown you into, the book ends. Which is a little bit of a letdown, but with how many twists we went through to get to the end ending, I do still appreciate not slogging on with 15 different epilogues that I don’t really care about at this point.
Great thriller. An easy read. Another great piece of work from one of my favorite authors, Alice Feeney.
Stats: 310 pages – First published January 20, 2026
cmacs paperbacks 
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