- This edition made available through my local library as an e-book on Libby
- Publisher : Blackstone Publishing (August 17, 2021)
- Print length : 312 pages
Synopsis (Amazon)
No one even knew they were together. Now one of them is dead.
56 DAYS AGO
Ciara and Oliver meet in a supermarket queue in Dublin and start dating the same week COVID-19 reaches Irish shores.
35 DAYS AGO
When lockdown threatens to keep them apart, Oliver suggests they move in together. Ciara sees a unique opportunity for a relationship to flourish without the scrutiny of family and friends. Oliver sees a chance to hide who—and what—he really is.
TODAY
Detectives arrive at Oliver’s apartment to discover a decomposing body inside.
Can they determine what really happened, or has lockdown created an opportunity for someone to commit the perfect crime?
My Take
I read somewhere recently that discerning readers will in the future require writers to identify their time frame as pre-pandemic or post-pandemic, but this is the first novel that I've read that uses the pandemic as a background.
Much of what happens in Dublin as Ireland goes into lockdown in the first wave of the pandemic will be familiar to you. It certainly coincides with what happened here in Australia as Covid-19 raced through our cities and the fingers of infection reached out to us. Australia closed its borders to keep us safe, we worked from home, schools closed, and we all hibernated.
There are some interesting features to this novel. Ciara and Oliver are the two main narrative voices, and while we are aware from early on that Oliver has a hidden past, Ciara's hidden past does not emerge until later on. The settings jump time frames, leaping from TODAY back into the past, and we sometimes see an event from at least two points of view.
Very well constructed. And it raises some interesting questions, not the least the one of whether anybody really ever pays the full price for a mistake in their past.
My rating: 4.7
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