“ ‘You’re my best friend,’ she says. She says it forcefully, as though I might contest it. ‘You’re mine too,’ I say laughing. ‘Never forget that,’ she says, looking into my eyes in such a strange way that my laughter dies.”
Maybe I loved this better than most and I’m not ashamed! It captured me and I couldn’t stop turning the pages. Orla and Kate, two best friends for many years, create a tradition of flying to exotic destinations together, but with Orla having a newborn, Marlow, amongst a slew of other things, including emotional challenges and setbacks, their trips have been in short supply in recent years. But this year, that’s about to change as they decide to visit Lisbon, Portugal, together.
“I’ve always been so good at reading people but now I feel like I can’t trust myself or my instincts. Everything’s off kilter.”
However, what starts off as an innocent journey ends as anything but. Kate goes missing and Orla has to retrace in her mind everything about that night, every action and step taken, no matter how small or seemingly insignificant. Without leaving out the words hurled in moments of burning, impassioned anger, in order to figure out where she has gone, which becomes increasingly difficult to do on account of the fact that Orla has been suffering gaps in memory due to overconsumption of alcohol and potentially drugs that night.
“I’m a whirlpool dragging everyone who comes close to me towards an unfortunate end.”
At the beginning, though, before the drama comes to a head, Orla and Kate are almost foils of each other: Orla being the practical, no-nonsense mom whose partying days are seemingly long behind her and Kate, the vivacious woman who sets any room alight with her resplendent charm, but also has cunningly mastered the art of manipulation and deception.
And I thought, throughout, that the cracks in the façade of their friendship were thoroughly examined as nothing was as it seemed for even a second. Both were, at their core, sad and yearned for something stronger to keep them tied to the present moment, in different, but equally fascinating, yet despairing, ways. I could feel their emotions viscerally and unsettlingly, as layers of their characters were beautifully peeled back before moments of reveal. And I also could intuit deeply the strength build in Orla, in the most empowering of ways, to fight back and continue persevering on her journey to find her friend, even when she winds up finding out that she knew next to nothing real or honest about her. Someone you thought was so close to you, in this case like an adopted, fun sister, can actually be so far, so removed from what you believed to be true and trust, as well as additionally be hiding secrets that could just take a turn for the deadly.
“For a moment, it felt as though the truth was lit up bright as the sun, but now a shadow has passed in front of it and everything is murky once more.”
This book took me like a whirlwind and entranced me until the very end where just enough is left to ponder what will happen next in this world and to these characters. I won’t forget them nor will I forget what brought them hopefully together and tore them more tragically apart.
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Fantastic thriller!
I will be buying more Sarah Alderson books in the future! Absolutely loved this book.
