I had two very conflicting reactions to this book. The story was fast paced and thrilling and wouldn’t let me stop reading until I had finished. It’s the quickest I’ve read a book in a long time. But then there was the writing, and you could definitely tell that this is one of Harris’ earlier books. There is a lot of repetition, and detail in places where it is not needed (like too much focus on her hair or her glasses). It kind of distracted from the energy of the story, but not enough so that I didn’t enjoy it.

Aurora is at home when the man delivering her wood goes mad and starts dancing naked around her garden. Now this wasn’t actually an important part of the story and we only find out why right at the end. Although the explanation felt like an afterthought, so I think it would have been better without it. After this man has been taken away by the police, a relative of Aurora’s husband Martin turns up on the doorstep with a new baby. Only no-one knows that Regina was ever pregnant. Martin and Aurora go out for dinner, but when they return, Regina is missing, there is a dead man on the steps of the house with a hatchet in his head, the baby is hidden under the bed and there is a strange man hidden in Aurora’s house.

Martin and Aurora decide that they need to find Regina or a relative of hers so that they don’t have to look after the baby, so they return to Martin’s hometown in Ohio, to his old family home on a farm in the middle of nowhere. The drama escalates from here, building to a thrilling (and heart-wrenching) conclusion.

I’m really looking forward to reading the next book in the series now, which surprised me, because I didn’t really enjoy the last book. Only 3/5 though due to the almost amateur-style writing.