Recommendation: The Holiday by T.M Logan
“It was supposed to be the perfect holiday, four best friends and their husbands and children in a luxurious villa under the blazing sunshine of Provence. But there is trouble in paradise.”
I first saw an advert for T.M Logan’s The Holiday and I knew immediately I wanted to read it. It was a tweet from the author himself, advertising the preorder, with the line “It was supposed to be a perfect week under the blazing Mediterranean sun, but there is suspicion in the air and murder on the cards…”
With a vacation coming up myself, coincidentally also in the blazing Mediterranean sun, I knew this would be a great pool-side read.
Every vacation I took when I was a child was with my godparents and their children, along with my uncle and his three boys. I know family vacations — and the one I took this summer was no different; me, my partner and the majority of his close family.
In The Holiday, four best friends and their husbands, along with a handful of children, live in each others pockets for two weeks. Our main character Kate, has a growing suspicion that her husband is cheating on her — with one of her best friends, here with her on this trip.
Is it Rowan, blooming business woman with multi-million pound deal on the cards at work?
Is it Izzy, sun-kissed traveller, Irish roots just like Kate’s husband, returning home after years away?
Is it Jennifer, amazonian-tall, blonde beauty with a Californian twang?
What Kate also doesn’t know is that someone, one of the people closest to her, may be prepared to commit murder to keep their secret hidden.
As if Kate doesn’t have enough to be concerned about this book is filled with dysfunctional families, troubled teenagers and the navigations of the inter-marital politics of her close friends. The children range from youngest, Odette; annoying as all hell with seemingly grabby, sticky fingers, to oldest Lucy; teenage girl with the world on her shoulders, an addiction to her mobile phone and a penchant to push boundaries with the younger boys staying at the villa. Cigarettes, booze and dares that should never be dared.
As I lay out on the sun patio on my holiday, I couldn’t hear the birds in the nearby trees, I couldn’t hear the waves lapping at the beach no less than two minutes away. I was completely engrossed. I paced in the shallow end of the pool, eyes whizzing down page after page. I had to know what was going on, what the ending was going to reveal.
Not only was the climax of the book completely unexpected it proceeded a few brilliantly written pages where, as a reader, I knew what had happened but I didn’t know who it had happened to. In those four pages, my mind unravelled. We knew someone was dead — that’s no spoiler, it’s on the cover — but we didn’t know who was in the “small coffin covered in white lilies.”
I haven’t read a book that used this way of delaying information having such an effect on a reader for longer than I can remember and it was so, so worth it.
I thoroughly recommend this book. Pick it up before the summer is out if you can — it will only add to your experience of reading. I also love the edition I bought — it features letters of recommendation from Richard & Judy, but also a short interview with T.M Logan, a set of ‘book club’ style questions and personal crime fiction recommendations from T.M Logan, himself.
A bumper deal.
