When Rosie Rankin's best friend has an affair with her husband, the consequences reverberate down through the lives of two families.
Relationships are torn apart. Friendships shattered. And childish innocence destroyed.
Her daughter Daisy's fragile hold on reality begins to unravel when a letter arrives that opens up all the old wounds. Rosie's teenage son Max blames himself for everything which happened that long hot summer. And her brittle ex-husband Nick has his own version of events.
As long-repressed memories bubble to the surface, the past has never seemed more present and the truth more murky.
Sometimes there are four sides to every story.
Who do you believe?
Told through the eyes of four members of the same family, The Betrayals takes an unflinching look at contemporary family life, explores the nature of memory and desire and asks whether some things can ever be forgiven.
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[Three is a good and safe number]***
(Penguin, 10 August 2017, copy provided by the publisher via NetGalley and voluntarily reviewed)
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This is my first time reading the author.
I thoroughly enjoyed The Betrayals.
I thought the characters were great, so well written they were like real people, made of flesh and blood and almost stepped off the page. Daisy was my favourite character. Her fragility, compounded by her OCD, triggered a second time when the past threatens the fragile present was raw and painful to read at times. I don't know anyone who has OCD and have never experience it myself but I think the writer did a good job of exploring this through Daisy's eyes.
I liked the way the novel is structured, blending the present and the events in the past that led to so many lives being ripped apart, gradually revealing everyone's darkest secrets and the truth about what really happened during a fateful holiday in Norfolk.
The Betrayals deals with memory and how what we remember about the past is rarely the exact version of events. Memory is twisted, confused and disoriented by what we want to remember about events and how we want to perceive ourselves and be perceived. The author does a great job at conveying this theme.
