Description
Welcome to Eris: an island with only one house, one inhabitant, one way out. Unreachable from the Scottish mainland for twelve hours each day.
Once home to Vanessa: A famous artist whose notoriously unfaithful husband disappeared twenty years ago.
Now home to Grace: A solitary creature of the tides, content in her own isolation.
But when a shocking discovery is made in an art gallery far away in London, a visitor comes calling.
And the secrets of Eris threaten to emerge….
A masterful novel that is as page-turning as it is unsettling, The Blue Hour recalls the sophisticated suspense of Shirley Jackson and Patricia Highsmith and cements Hawkins’s place among the very best of our most nuanced and stylish storytellers.
My Thoughts
Paula Hawkins’ latest is a grip-the-book-so-hard-your-fingers-hurt kind of story. The premise is fascinating – the work of a deceased famous artist is discovered to contain a human bone and it just so happens her philandering husband disappeared from her remote island home years ago. Could it be him?
The story follows an inquisitive curator as he navigates the treacherous terrain of that island, now inhabited by the artist’s companion of many years and executor of her estate. While the outcome was apparent to me pretty early in the story, the tension Hawkins builds as she weaves the stories of both Vanessa and Grace becomes almost unbearable at times, and the ending! Oh, the ambiguous ending! Definitely the stuff made for book clubs to debate!
Hawkins is getting better and better at taking old tropes and breathing new life into them. As I read this, I was reminded of both And Then There Were None for the isolation and Misery for the core relationship driving the story, but Hawkins has made both her very own.
Readers who are triggered by domestic violence should be aware that is an integral part of this story. This will be one of the hot books of the Fall for sure.
Advanced Praise
“The best Paula Hawkins yet – by a tense and haunting mile.” – Lee Child
“An atmospheric, stylish puzzle box of a thriller… truly exceptional.” – Liz Moore, New York Times bestselling author of The God of the Woods
“A masterful exploration of the nature of obsession…I loved it.” – Angie Kim, New York Times bestselling author of Happiness Falls and Miracle Creek
The propulsive and powerful new novel from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Girl on the Train
Publication Date: October 29, 2024
Published By: Mariner Books
Thanks to Netgalley and the Publisher for the review copies
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