December 18, 2017
Almost nothing is as it initially appears in BBC News veteran Feeney’s bold if overambitious debut, a serpentine tale of betrayal, madness, and murder. Amber Reynolds, a radio show presenter, is lying in a London-area hospital in a coma the day after Christmas, body unresponsive but mind alert, struggling to piece together what happened to her—and whether it has anything to do with Paul, her husband (whom the police suspect), or Claire, the younger sister she fears Paul’s fallen for. Not to mention the menacing man who sneaks into her hospital room. But as days pass and memories flood back—both from the turbulent previous weeks, when she was fighting to keep her job and near-frantic about Paul being unfaithful, and from the particularly fraught year when she was 11—it becomes clear that this is an infinitely more sinister story. Feeney packs the final 60-odd pages with a series of head-spinning and, in some cases, head-scratching plot twists; the overall effect is to leave readers wondering exactly what happened—and how much of Amber’s account they can believe. Feeney is definitely a writer to watch. Agent: Jonny Gellar, Curtis Brown.