Façade by Helen Matthews is a superbly written story. A tightly and skilfully plotted story about a family and the house they live in, The Old Rectory. As soon as I began this book I was dying to find out the full story of what actually happened in May 1999, in the garden of The Old Rectory.
Twenty years later, Max and Miriam still hang on to the house where their baby son died but is killing their daughter, Rachel, attempting to keep up with the repairs and everything involved in keeping a Georgian house going.
The story is told from alternate points of view, Imogen the free-spirited daughter who has lost her love and Rachel, successful with a partner, Jack and Hannah their daughter. Imogen comes back to The Old Rectory and decides the time has come to make everyone pay. The book then time slips back and forth, showing us flashbacks of the past so we get to see the issues of why Imogen feels this way.
The story is cleverly written so that it is not just one mystery to solve there are plenty and they are all intertwined and all show just how important family is. There is a boiling pot of resentment, bitterness and secrets that only cause destruction in their wake and I was expecting it to spill over at any point.
This book just didn’t slow down for me. It sped up, I was hooked for good. The twists and turns of the story just kept on coming, right to the very end! Wow! That final twist was the one!
Thank you to Rachel’s Random Resources and Helen Matthews for the book so I could write this review for this compelling, twisty story today.
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