Opening weekend at an ultra luxurious wellness focused manor resort on the seaside? Sounds great, sign me right up, I’m sure nothing terrible will happen.
Francesca has been focusing her considerable powers on transforming her late grandfather’s seaside estate into the hottest new wellness destination for the wealthy instagram set. She’s being helped by her husband Owen, a world famous and highly in demand architect. Young Eddie just wants to work his way up to being a bartender while hiding the fact that he comes from the not nearly picturesque enough farm down the road. Bella is a mysterious resort guest who seems just a little too familiar with the area. Over the course of opening weekend past actions will be brought to light and old scores will be settled.
I’ve enjoyed Foley’s past novels that I’ve read, though I liked The Hunting Party much more than The Paris Apartment. I quite enjoyed this one as well. It did start a bit slowly with a largish cast of characters and jumping around in time between 15 years ago, opening weekend, and immediately after opening weekend through the eyes of police officer DI Walker. But once I got into the rhythms of that and used to our four main characters I could not stop reading. Francesca was amusing as a thinly veiled Gwyneth Paltrow/Goop type. The twists and turns all fit together neatly at the end and while I was able to figured out one or two the majority were a surprise. Wound throughout the story is the local legend of the Birds who punish evildoers that try to evade justice and that revelation at the end I found extremely satisfying. Go Birds!
