This very interesting, very clever book is almost like a distant relative of Sliding Doors; it’s not about what might have been, it’s more what has been but doesn’t have to be again. I don’t want to spoil anyone’s enjoyment of watching the story unravel but here is just a little glimpse: Mel, the main protagonist, sees a young man who bears an uncanny resemblance to someone from her past moving into the apartment upstairs and from then on it’s as if she is watching a replay of her own earlier life.
Lorelai and Flynn are the couple upstairs and their back stories, as well as Mel’s, ensure a suspenseful, uneasy thread which never loosens and a totally unexpected turn which kept me glued to the book until the last page.
Scenes from Broome, Manchester and Sydney’s Coogee Beach are vivid and evocative. Characters are real, sometimes almost painfully so and Holly Wainwright is, obviously, one of those authors who can inhabit her characters as she writes.
I think a lot of people spend time dwelling on a part of their previous lives that they would change, if they could. What about if you saw a story from your past, involving someone just like you, playing out in the present time and, you presumed, heading for the same outcome. Would you try to step in and change the course of events? This is the beauty of fiction; it can take a what if? and run with it, seeing where it goes.
We have so many terrific writers in Australia, and Holly Wainwright is up there with the best of them. This was a brilliant read!
Published by Macmillan
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