#BookReview ‘Confess To Me’ by Sharon Doering

About the book…

Somewhere between OZARK and SHARP OBJECTS, there is Sharon Doering’s Confess to Me. Get settled in for a long night of reading, because you won’t put this one down.
— Samantha Downing, International bestselling author

You don’t devour this book — it devours you.”
— P.J Vernon, author of ‘Bath Haus’

Doering writes with exceptional authenticity and imagination, delivering spellbinding plot twists in this small-town psychological thriller. I loved every moment spent with this story!
—Wendy Walker, best-selling author of ‘Don’t Look For Me’

A wickedly gripping thriller about family secrets, infatuation and the lies we bury to protect ourselves from the author of ‘She Lies Close’

Heather Hornne is going home.

Haunted by a childhood tragedy and estranged from her family, Heather finds herself back in Hunther, Wisconsin after twenty years running from it.

She returns to finally put the past to rest, but uncovers another tragedy and finds herself in the beguiling grip of a young woman who knows more of her family secrets than Heather does.

To survive this homecoming, Heather must piece together a toxic history that she long tried to forget the author…

Huge thanks to the team at Titan who accepted my request to read ‘Confess To Me’, on Netgalley as I was the biggest fan of her debut thriller, the extraordinary,’She Lies Close’.

And this is in the same vein, it explores the relationship between parents and their children, the hereditary nature of ‘evil’, and the way that memories are not always what they seem, they are dependent on the prism through which they are viewed.

Having managed to shake the surname,Hornne, and the town which villified it, Heather returns home to Hunther, family in tow, to assist her husband in caring for his dying mother.

Anonymous texts have been arriving daily, forcing Heather out of the almost comfort zone in which she exists with her husband and children, and back into her childhood. The fact that only she and her estranged sister,Holly, are left of the 5 Hornne siblings hints at mysterious events in this back woods place. Her family were known as ‘the weird ones’, and fractured memories peck at Heather’s brain as she seeks to establish a truth she isn’t even sure she wants to know.

A long forgotten death, for which there was no culprit, a suicide, rumours of Satan worship and the period in which her mother disappeared, then returned, not quite the same, all combine to make a heady mix of past and present. Heather’s narrative intersperses with that of her husband Trevor, who has secrets of his own.

As Heather digs deeper into the worn fabric of local history, she risks pulling a thread which could unravel everything.

The sharpness and reality of trying to create a blended family, raising children and acknowledging responsibilities based on blood ties, are so fragile, and spun so thinly that they can look like silk, yet they support such weight. At the heart of this novel, is how you create and maintain a family in safety against intrusions from toxic influences.

But, no matter how hard you work at it, there are influences outside the control of human will.

There is the strange man who lives down the road and keeps randomly turning up, not to mention the fact their neighbour keeps cougars as pets.

Added to that is the lush young woman who prowls the local swimming pool like a naiad, the appropriately named Desiree, who teaches Heather’s younger child to swim.

This pool, the first point of contact which Heather has with Hunther, is immensely symbolic as the poorer population of the town are figuratively, and literally, swimming in the tiny percentage of the wealthier parts largesse.

The quasi-philanthropic nature of the community pool means that you could say both rich and poor are tainted alike by obligation and responsibility to each other, one showing their wealth by bestowing it on the other.

‘Confess To Me’ is a novel of soul searching, a story of a journey into the darkness of a woman’s childhood which still has roots that may be rotted, yet stubbornly cling to her legs. If she can manage to shake them free, then she will be able to be the mother that she wishes she had.

Yet again, Sharon Doering manages to subvert the social expectation on women to put up and shut up by presenting women with a veneer covering dark, devious hearts. Beneath the laquer and the make up lie bitter souls…

About the author…

Sharon Doering lives in the Chicago area with her husband, Marc, their three kids, and a peculiarly civilized dog, Indy.

In her other life, she was a science professor, a biotech stock analyst, and a xenotransplantation researcher. She has also been a good waitress, a mediocre bartender, and a terrible maid.

‘She Lies Close’ from Titan Books, is her first novel in the genre of domestic suspense

Links-http://www.sharondoering.com/

Twitter @SharonJDoering @TitanBooks