I received an e-copy of this book from the publishers via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
When Caro's stepmother dies, she moves back to her childhood home that she ran away from as soon as she could leave for college. Confronted with past memories, Caro begins to explore what really happened when she was a child and unearths forgotten memories. What really happened between Caro, her stepmother and her estranged sister Steph - who claims to want no part of the inheritance, all that time ago and is Caro safe in the house now even though her tormentor is gone?

This was a very sinister psychological thriller with roots in creepy fairy tales - particularly The New Mother by Lucy Clifford. I definitely felt a bit unnerved while reading this book. I did like that Caro began to fall into the unreliable narrator trope as it appeared her mind was beginning to unravel and her memories were mixing up and as a reader I wasn't really sure what she was actually seeing versus what she was imagining. 

I didn't really get on with Caro though as a main character, I never really clicked with her or the story in general. This is a slower-paced thriller which isn't really my favourite - I much prefer fast-paced ones that leave me on the edge of my seat. I found a lot of Caro's actions a bit silly, and as a grown adult I couldn't quite understand how much she wasn't in the know about her own situation. There was an attempt at showing tha Caro was recovering from an abusive relationship but I definitely think this could have been explored more, and didn't quite bring much to the story besides fortifying Caro as a person who has been abused for most of her life by people she should have been able to love and trust. She never really comes across as a strong character, even when confronting people. The whole book she seems a bit cowed and I would have liked her to rise from the ashes a bit more.

I did think for a bit that Caro's mental unraveling seemed a little bit odd and out of place, as up to that point she had appeared to be fine. The drinking was also strange as at the start of the book, there's a couple of references from Caro that she wasn't a big drinker yet several times during the novel she drinks a bottle of whisky (the results of which do serve to bring the plot forward but I still thought it all an odd character choice).

This book was fine, it just wasn't one I really connected with or found myself really engrossed in.