Review: THE WEDDING PARTY, Rebecca Heath

• 
  This edition read as an e-book supplied by my local library on Libby
  
• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Head of Zeus -- an Aries Book
• Publication date ‏ : ‎ 7 January 2025
• Print length ‏ : ‎ 373 pages 

Synopsis (publisher)

Three families united by a terrible event must survive a deadly wedding in this latest gripping thriller from INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER Rebecca Heath, author of The Summer Party and The Dinner Party!

A group of old friends. A grieving mother. A lying bride.

Adele and Jason are childhood sweethearts. Their wedding day on the sunny Australian coast is a chance to reunite and celebrate with friends and family.

But Adele isn't telling the truth about her relationship. And some of the wedding party – still reeling from a tragic death in the group a decade before – hold secrets of their own.

What happened on the jetty all those years ago was an accident, everyone agrees.

Or do they?

My Take

Twelve years ago Ollie died as a result of a diving accident from the old jetty at this South Australian beach. His mother Melanie has never accepted it as an accident, but now on the second-worst day of her life she will watch his girlfriend Adele marry Jason, supposedly his best mate. And no-one is listening to Melanie!

It will be big wedding, many leadup events, and then Jason launches a surprise. 

This story has an interesting construction: several authors and several time frames. It's difficult, but successful. 

My rating: 4.6

I've also read

5.0. THE DINNER PARTY

4.5, THE SUMMER PARTY

Review: THE SUMMER PARTY, Rebecca Heath

• 
  This edition made available by my local library as an e-book on Libby
  
• Published     05 Jan 2023
• Format     Ebook (Epub & Mobi)
• Extent     416 pages
• ISBN     9781804540978
• Imprint     Head of Zeus -- an Aries Book
• Publisher     Bloomsbury Publishing

Synopsis (publisher)

Perfect families are only as perfect as their best kept secrets.

Summer, 2000
The Whitlam siblings have it all and sixteen-year-old Lucy only wants one thing – to be close to them. Soon she's lazing around their impossibly large pool, wearing Annabel's expensive clothes and having secret rendezvous with Harry, until at their lavish clifftop party she sees something that could jeopardise it all.

Winter, 2020
One failed marriage later, Lucy is back in town and quickly lured back into the Whitlam's shiny world. But when a body washes up on the beach and someone seems determined to frame her for murder keeping their secrets this time could cost her everything.

Now that summer is over is she with them or against them? 

My Take

Lucy came to stay with her grandmother for the summer when she was 16. The Whitlams lived in the white mansion on the hill in a rural town on the Yorke Peninsular in South Australia.  Lucy's grandmother's cottage was next door. Alongside the three Whitlam siblings Lucy was an unsophisticated teenager and she idolised them. Lucy's grandmother worked as a cleaner for the Whitlam family and she warned Lucy not to get too friendly with them.

At the end of the summer, on the last night Lucy was there, the mother, Brooke Whitlam, left home forever and Lucy witnessed something without really realising what she had seen.

Twenty years later Lucy's grandmother has died and Lucy comes back to clear out the cottage. A foot is washed up under the jetty on the Whitlam's property, and it is identified as Brooke's. Lucy renews her "friendship" with the Whitlam siblings, their father, and the local policeman.

This is Rebecca Heath's debut novel, and though her later novel THE DINNER PARTY is much better, THE SUMMER PARTY is very readable and the plot is well constructed. 

My rating: 4.5

I've also read

5.0. THE DINNER PARTY

Review: THE DINNER PARTY, Rebecca Heath

• 
  This edition made available as an e-book on Libby by my local library
  
• Published 03 Jan 2024 by Bloomsbury Publishing
• Extent     416 pages
• ISBN     9781804546109

Synopsis (Publisher) 

The new exciting thriller by Rebecca Heath, author of THE SUMMER PARTY. A dark and twisty domestic thriller set in a seemingly idyllic suburban neighbourhood, where family secrets are best kept buried...

FOUR COUPLES.
Summer 1979. In the idyllic suburban neighbourhood of Ridgefield, Australia, during a scorching heat wave, four couples gather for their weekly dinner party.

AN ORDINARY EVENING.
When Frank Callaghan checks on the sleeping children, he finds an empty crib where his four-month-old daughter Megan should be sleeping. The party-goers swear they didn't see anything but each of them has something to hide.

THE BEGINNING OF A NIGHTMARE.
Forty years later, a stranger knocks at the Callaghan's door. She claims to be their missing daughter. And she's holding the blanket she was wrapped in the night she disappeared.

Shocked, the Callaghans must finally confront how well they know their neighbours, and ask themselves:
Where has Megan really been all this time?

My Take

There is so much to like about this novel, not just that it is by a South Australian author, or that it is right in the time frame of my own life.

The action begins in 1979 with the disappearance of a 4 month old baby while her parents are at a dinner party in a neighbouring house. 40 years later 'The Callaghan Baby Podcast' is investigating what is now a forty-year-old cold case, bringing together investigative evidence from when the disappearance happened, police reports, a coronial investigation, interviews with suspects, family and neighbours both then and now.  The author combines that with other voices, particularly that of Billie, the adult daughter of baby Megan's sister.

This made the structure of the novel very complex, and quite challenging for the reader, but a staggering achievement. So much of the book rang true for me.

The family is marking the anniversary of Megan's disappearance with a family gathering when there is a knock at the door: a stranger is standing on the doorstep.  

Little by little, elements of the mystery are revealed and the reader is asked to assess evidence.

Highly recommended.

My Rating: 5.0

About the Author
Rebecca Heath studied science at university, worked in hospitality and teaching, but she always carved out time to write. She lives in Adelaide, Australia, halfway between the city and the sea with her husband, three children and a much-loved border collie. She spent her childhood summers at a remote beach. Her first novel is THE SUMMER PARTY