Wednesday 27 February 2019

Book Review: House Swap by Rebecca Fleet

We going to have an accidental theme.

‘No one lives this way unless they want to hide something.’ 

When Caroline and Francis receive an offer to house swap, they jump at the chance for a week away from home. After the difficulties of the past few years, they’ve worked hard to rebuild their marriage for their son’s sake; now they want to reconnect as a couple.

On arrival, they find a house that is stark and sinister in its emptiness – it’s hard to imagine what kind of person lives here. Then, gradually, Caroline begins to uncover some signs of life – signs of her life. The flowers in the bathroom or the music in the CD player might seem innocent to her husband but to her they are anything but. It seems the person they have swapped with is someone she used to know; someone she’s desperate to leave in her past.

But that person is now in her home – and they want to make sure she’ll never forget . . .


This book is sadly not really a thriller, it tries to have a twist but especially doesn't work and with the audiobook production I was more annoyed than anything. It mostly dances around the facts of the story, or things that they no reason to dance around other than laziness and to drag this thing out.

The characters are very bland, they work in marketing kinda bland (they might not work in marketing, it just reference to obsession with marketing as a job in film. I don't know what they work as). I think this lacking important thriller elements as well as the characters not having much development. I guess we're meant to feel sorry for them, but I don't know who they're meant to be. 

The audiobook performance was fine, not sure why they decided to spend the money on four narrators for this book. Frankly, it would have worked better with just one, with the dumb twist. It's probably OMG moment when the narrators switch but as soon as the POV was introduce it was clearly not going to be who she thinks it is, otherwise they couldn't market this as Thriller. 

This book does have Thriller elements, like an obvious mystery that you know will be solved as soon as you know what terrible secret the MC has, so it's not thrilling at all. There's also the Husband's mystery drug problem, that he started because of stress, so it is a prescribed drug. I know it's not antidepressants but imagining it was and his wife was just being an arse about him still taking it, it would really fitted with this book. It's never stated so feels very McGuffin. I guess it's a sleeping pill, he's a therapist, so maybe he's meant to have self-prescribed them but that would be a scandal on it's own. 

If this is not a Thriller what genre is it? I guess Drama, or just fiction for what it would be market in bookstore or library. The idea of that's promised on the back is a Thriller, but its more about petty relationships. Most of the relationships were sex scenes: have an affair and it's love because the sex is good. I'm Ace so if this meant to have been some great love story with tragic ending, it's okay if you say so. The one time it goes to back to a thriller, it sways away again. I got really excited that something was going to happen but then it didn't so back to petty nonsense. 

Overall, I gave this book 2/5 stars for Dead Hamsters. If want something that's actually a thriller then go for You Let Me In (I will review this book soon, I read it first and probably should have review it that way.). It's actually a thriller and I didn't question not finishing it. It has a similar feature of someone renting their House to someone while they away.

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