The Betrayals by Fiona Neill

The Betrayals by Fiona Neill
Published in: 2017
Reviewed by: Book Worm
Rating: [★★★1/2]

Who do you believe…

This ARC was provided by Penguin (via NetGalley) in exchange for an honest review.

Synopsis from Goodreads: 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.

Book Worm’s Thoughts: I went into this expecting a thriller what I got was much more than that. Let me say from the start that what actually happened in the past is not important what is important is what each family member recalls and how time has warped those memories.

The book has four narrators, Nick, Rosie and their children Daisy and Max. Each narrator is unreliable but not because they are deliberately misleading the reader or the other characters but because memory itself is unreliable. Each of them remembers their own truth about the events of what actually happened that fateful summer but what the truth is lies somewhere in between all the tangled memories.

For me the strongest point of this book was the portrayal of Daisy and her fight against OCD, the reader is shown what is going on in her head, what triggers her OCD and how the disease spirals out of control until it has almost entirely taken over her life. This description is completely believable and I think most readers will be able to relate to early stages of OCD.

The weakest point for me is the ending, there is a “twist” thrown in that for me adds nothing to the story, nothing to our understanding of memory and really just seems to have been added to titillate and in my opinion this story was strong enough not to need that extra edge.

Who would like this? I would recommend this to those who like an insightful family story and those who want to see how easily OCD can manifest and take over a person’s life.

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