By Catriona McPherson
Midnight Ink, 2014. 301 pages. Fiction.
When Jessie Constable meets Gus King and his daughter Ruby in the grocery store, Gus is sitting on a bottom shelf, devastated to learn his wife has just left him. But after driving him home, Jessie is suddenly a part of this stranger's family, watching the kids, cleaning the house, staying the night - and she wonders if she has at last found love. And her wish for love makes her hesitate to acknowledge the strange things that have been happening at the house since Gus learned that his wife died the day she left him in a terrible car accident.
McPherson has crafted a deeply psychological thriller in this book and by the time I finished it, I really was confused about whether I liked it or not - even though I couldn't put it down. And I think that is the point of the book. The characters are so completely normal and yet unsettled and unsettling that they leave the reader feeling the same way long after the book is over. In fact, the book doesn't even feel like a thriller until halfway through the book, when Jessie begins to question things that happen, because everything seems so normal. Don't pick this up if you're looking for a lot of action or gore because you'll be sadly disappointed. But as a study of a normal person in a normal circumstance that suddenly becomes a whole lot less than normal, the story is brilliant. There is a lot of profanity and some innuendo.
JH
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