(CW - mention of stillbirth and infant death)
Who doesn't love a good guilty pleasure? Junk food in book form? A fast, easy to digest thriller with a twist you can see coming half a mile away. I certainly do. And so, every so often I find myself in the book aisle in Asda during the weekly food shop, where the books are 2 for £9, and aside from the occasional hidden gem, the plots are undemanding, authors are mass appeal and all the publishers hire the same graphic designer. Can a thriller be anything but a blue-black cover with a bold red or yellow title?
That pretty much sums up why I ended up slipping The Cottage in among my carrots and eggs: the opportunity to buy a sneaky cheap book on the joint debit card (don't tell my partner), an intriguing blurb, and a craving for the literary equivalent of a KFC rather than the Haute cuisine I've been consuming a lot of lately.
So, let's talk plot. Our main character, Jan Hamlin is having a rough time of it. She's just lost her job, and been dumped by her long term boyfriend all in one week. So, she does what everyone fantasises about in that situation but rarely has the nerve to actually do - she ups sticks and moves to remote Ivy Cottage on the edge of creepy Coleshaw Woods. The cottage comes with a dog, (the unfortunately named?) Tinder which is great, but it also comes with strange noises at night - less great. Every night, Jan and Tinder are disturbed by mysterious intruders in the garden, tapping at the window, and peculiar muddy foot prints that come closer and closer each time darkness falls...
Jan's story intertwines with that of Emma and Ian Jennings who, after suffering a second tragic stillbirth begin to suspect that there could be a sinister explanation for their bad luck and become determined to find out why. For about 75% of the book, these two narratives appear completely unrelated, though it's pretty easy to work out that they're going to link together in the final act.
This isn't the first time I've been oversold a plot by a blurb, and I'm sure it won't be the last. I was hoping for some paranormal activity, but that isn't what I got at all. Although the book is entertaining, and does manage to create an aura of tension and spookiness around Jan's half of the story, I figured out the Big Twist approximately a third of the way through, and I'm honestly astonished the characters didn't too. They weren't half slow, really. Once I worked the twist out, I was anticipating the ending, but it wasn't quite what I expected - though not necessarily in a good way. It was too sci-fi to be a thriller, but too mild and almost cutesy(??) to be a decent horror. The ending also drags on a fair bit - you think that every chapter is the last, but surprise! There's another one. Three months later... six months later... a year later... Each of these final chapters also tries to cram in another twist, but in a "law of diminishing returns" kind of way, where each twist is less shocking and more easily resolved that the previous. The dialogue needed some work too, it felt very stilted and forced in places.
In summary: was I mildly entertained by this book? Yes. Sometimes it is nice to read a book while only having to switch on a minimum number of brain cells. Like I said, straight up brain junk food. Will it probably end up in a bag for the charity shop at some point? Also yes. I don't think I'll be tempted by another Lisa Stone thriller, I'm afraid. Even if it is 2 for £9 in Asda.
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