Page Count 368
Publication date Dec 2021
Publisher Avon
Synopsis
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Have you heard about the couple on Maple Drive?
Isla barely leaves the house after her brutal mugging.
Her boyfriend Zach moved in with her after the attack. To look after her.
But something else has happened now. Right on their doorstep.
I don’t want to say that someone’s out to get her…
I just hope they find out the truth before it’s too late
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Review
I’d not read any Sam Carrington before I requested The Couple On Maple Drive, and I can’t tell you what made me do so.
The cover as you’ll see is typical of domestic thriller novels and the author was unfamiliar to me, perhaps I wanted a book that didnt involve any world building or viruses, no obscure language, something easy to read.
Suffering retrograde amnesia after a brutal mugging, Isla slowly begins to piece together what really happened. Her new found love of a particular podcast- Christie’s Crime Addicts- leads Isla to an unshakeable belief; this was not a random attack. With nowhere left to turn Isla approaches the very people who sowed this seed.
Told in third person by Isla and Zach, The Couple On Maple Drive switches between the timeline before and after the attack interspersed with scripts from Christie’s Crime Addicts podcast covering multiple cases in the local Torquay area.
It’s clear pretty early on who the perpetrator of the mugging is, but with Carrington writing such unreliable characters you can’t be certain and I found myself going back and forth often over the many possibilities.
Once motives are uncovered and the end is in sight the story accelerates leaving so many more unanswered questions for all involved.
I enjoyed the podcast script utilised as a handy summary and giving the feeling of watching the scenario unfold like a television news report. Isla’s character is of a standard scared damsel with nothing left to lose finding the tenacity to stand up. I rooted for her immediately despite some seriously ill advised decision making.
Torquay, Devon isn’t far from my own home so it was easy to picture the calm coastal setting and reactions of neighbours and underactive police in a small town hit by such violence.
A fun, straight-forward thriller for an easy evening read.
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