While enjoying a holiday together in Verona, siblings Joe and Cathy Plant each get a phone call from their younger sister Frannie. Frannie has accidentally hit a man with the hire car and she needs help. On arriving at the scene of the crime, it’s immediately apparent that the man is dead and that the body must be buried. The Plant siblings have always been close but just how far will they each go to protect their deadly secret? This is a very tense plot and it runs a very good pace. The premise in itself is quite unique and I was constantly waiting for the truth to catch up to them yet they kept seemingly managing to swerve it. It’s about the fierce loyalty between siblings with a very satisfying ending that was simply delicious.

A family secret that must be kept.
One night Frannie commits a crime that her brother and sister agree to cover up, whilst they are on holiday in Italy.
When they get home to England, the stress of it all affects them all in different ways, and the close proximity that they live and work together does not help them.
As the weeks go on, the family starts to unravel and this follows the book through and keeps you guessing until the end as to how this is resolved.

I have read a few books by Gillian MacAllister, so when this one came up I was really keen on getting a chance to review it. As usual I wasn’t disappointed, this is a really good read that hooks you in until the end.
Siblings Joe, Cathy and Frannie are staying in their holiday home in Verona. One night Frannie rings both siblings in the middle of the night asking for help. She has killed someone, but didn’t mean too, so Joe and Cathy help her bury the body.
After they return to England they find their lives unraveling as they try to keep the secret but they are racked by guilt.
The story flits between the present and the past and is told in the different point of views of Joe, Cathy, Frannie and Lydia (Joe’s wife).
Thank you to NetGalley and Penguin for letting me review this book.

I always eagerly look forward to a new release by Gillian McAllister, and That Night did not disappoint!

It’s a story of loyalties, secrets and guilt, all revolving around the Plant siblings: Joe, Cathy and Frannie. One night, on holiday in Verona at their holiday home, Frannie calls Cathy and Joe in a state. She’s accidentally hit a man with a car – not just any man, but someone she had an altercation with earlier that day – and he’s dead. But of course, things aren’t quite that simple and the siblings all end up getting dragged deeper and deeper into what fast becomes a living nightmare, as they try to help their sister avoid a potential prison sentence.

One of the (many) things I loved about this book is the way the author paints such a convincing, realistic portrait of the three sibling’s desperation. Their decision to help Frannie cover up what had happened and their subsequent decisions all felt like something you can imagine people deciding – or at least, it’s not outside the realms of possibility. Although you may not agree with their decisions, you can see why they chose to do what they did.

Cathy, Joe and Frannie all have their faults; none of them are perfect. I liked this about them; Joe in particular has a dangerous streak, Frannie selfishly puts all her siblings in a very difficult situation and Cath fails to put a stop to any of it. It makes you wonder: what would I do in their situation?

There’s plenty of mystery in this novel, as we wonder what really happened that night, who is being truthful and who is keeping their own secrets from their siblings. I liked that the novel is split into two parts – one focusing on ‘then’, as the accident happens and the weeks and months afterwards, and another narrative focusing on the ‘present day’, during which time the reader is very much in the dark about what exactly has happened since that fateful night, and is going on now. As the novel continues, we start to unpick this.

That Night kept me completely hooked. I feel that it strikes the perfect balance between mystery/ drama and realism, never straying too far into craziness but simultaneously never losing my attention even for a moment. Every conversation, every tense development, plays out beautifully and meant that I really struggled to put this novel down. One of my favourite reads of 2021 so far!

Gillian McCallister is an absolute genius and up there with my list of favourite authors. I actually squealed when my advanced copy of this landed and knew I instantly had to delve in. This is an intense read, as with the author’s usual style- this is laced with tension. This is a novel which focuses on siblings and this is something I haven’t come across before. How far would you go to protect a sibling?

The character development in this novel is amazing. Each have had their individual personality and seem real to the reader. Although, the characters are not always likeable. This is written so well that you feel the emotions of the characters which shows us how talented this author is.

This is a high quality novel with the perfect pace. The cover is FABULOUS and really catches the eye and raises intrigue. I get excited everytime I see it when out and about. I have found that certain parts of this book have made me emotional- a sign that I have been completely invested.

That Night is a brilliant read and completely addictive. I have been unwilling to put this down and definitely reinforced how much I adore Gillian McCallister. I honestly don’t know how she does it- every book is more amazing that the previous and I am eagerly awaiting the next novel- I am so excited to see what is coming!

Definitely a 10 star out of five worthy book. This is a MUST read and one that needs to be on the TBR.

Siblings Cathy, Joe and Frannie are extremely close. They live in three adjoining cottages, work together at the family’s vet practice, holiday together, spent their free time together. Cathy and Frannie are single, only Joe is married, and it’s not a wonder that his wife, Lydia, feels like an outsider sometimes.
One hot summer night on holidays in Italy, Cathy and Joe receive a phone call from Frannie who is begging for help. She has killed a man in a car accident and she doesn’t want to go to prison, she doesn’t want her todler Paul to grow up without a mother! The three siblings decide to bury the body in order to protect Frannie. But is it still a secret when already three people know about it? Moreover – one lie seems to lead to another one and soon the Plants become tangled in a whole web of them… Was it really worth to go that far to show your loyalty?

I was immediately pulled into the story – well, it had probably one of the best openings! It is this kind of read that will make you ask yourself „what would you do“ and well, I’m not sure what I would do, to be honest. It was thought – provoking, with some moral dillemas here and I really wanted to see how the author has solved them. It was very well plotted and the tension was palpable and the overwhelming feeling of uncertainty was always there, you couldn’t be sure what’s going to happen when you turn the page.

We immediately know what has happened but actually the whole „what’s going to happen“ develops slowly, with the author giving us snippets of information, complicating the plot, shedding different lights on the characters and in the end you truly don’t know whom to trust. The lies pile up and you can see that it was only the tip of the iceberg.

The story is told from alternative points of view and it flips from the past to the present. There are also some chapters with Lydia as a narrator. I liked this way of telling the story, I think it worked really well and it was brilliant to see the siblings’ different views, to see them thinking and over – thinking, sometimes ganging up on each other, and all the time slowly, slowly starting to panic, not knowing what the next news on TV might bring, not knowing if the other one is hiding something. I think they were really well developed, the characters – they were not likeable, they were flawed and damaged and more than often I found their relationship was not completely healthy, but nevertheless they felt 3 – dimensional. Cathy was the cool and always in control sister, while Frannie, the baby of the family, still immature, even though she was a mother already, always getting what she wanted. Joe was the over – protective brother, feeling responsible for his sisters, often hot – headed and acting before he thought the things over. However, and this is strange here, while I know they are all in the wrong, I still felt this weird compassion to them and sure, I know they’ve done something really, really terrible, but somehow, deep down, I understood them and their actions. They were not only bad – they still battled with their conscience, they were scared and this what has happened was affecting all parts of their lives, They were not stupid and they knew that they’re going to live with the consequences all their lives, but the deeper into the story, the more difficult it was for them to change something. And yes, I blamed them, but I also didn’t blame them, if you follow me.

I must admit that there came a point when I wanted this book to end – I wanted to have it all cleared and I wanted to know how it’s going to end. It doesn’t mean that I didn’t like it, because I did, I felt immeresed and intrigued, but it simply started to drag, as if the author has lengthened the story intentionally. It started to feel a bit repetitive. While there were some things that I managed to guess, there were still plenty of them that were an absolute surprise and altogether, „That Night“ was an absorbing, twisty and gripping read with things going from bad to worse.

This book is not only a thriller. It also brilliantly examines family dynamics, the bonds between siblings, how much are they able to sacrifice for each other and deep down it’s an emotional read. The author deeply digs into consequences, examining mental aspects of the characters’ actions and in my opinion, she has done it in a brilliant and successful way. It’s a tense, high – quality, complex and clever story, a real page – turner, unique and refreshing. Highly recommended!

The Plant siblings are extremely close, both literally and geographically, as they live in three adjoining cottages and work at the family’s veterinary practice. One night while they were on holiday in Verona, Frannie’s phone call takes their relationship a bit too far, when she accidentally kills a man and they find themselves facing a choice: hide the body or hand her to the police.

I fell in love with Gillian McAllister’s writing style after reading How to Disappear and in this book she has definitely confirmed her great capacity in writing gripping and tightly plotted thrillers.
I soon found myself lost in the pages and recurrently asking “what would I have done” in their shoes.
Every characters has different behavioural traits and all of them damaged by a family drama occurred in their childhood, which has bonded them and made them strangely inseparable.

The plot flits from present to past taking place in various location, which I found well researched. The story is narrated using different POVs: Joe’s, Frannie’s, Cathy’s and Lidya’s (Joe’s wife).

Not sure how Gillian has done it, but definitely that’s her most intense book, with highly well represented family and siblings dynamics, and what they are capable of doing for each other in a moment of distress and catastrophic consequences.

If you haven’t read any of her work, definitely pick this one up, you won’t regret it!

Blood is thicker than water as they say, but how far would you go to protect your family? When Frannie Plant calls on her brother Joe and sister Cathy in the middle of the night, family ties are push to the limit. Youngest sibling Frannie has committed a crime, and needs their help to cover it up. Their actions will change their relationship forever and a tangled web of lies will push them all to the brink.

That Night is a cleverly crafted psychological thriller by the genius that is Gillian McAllister. The intricate plot, timeline jumps and telling from different point of views requires some concentration, but the reward is a deliciously dark, twisty tale of family complexity in the extreme.

What would you do to protect the people you love the most? Would you lie for them? Help them to fix whatever needed fixing..? But what if they’d done something really bad? These are the questions I found myself pondering while reading Gillian McAllister’s outstanding new thriller, That Night.

I really love a book that poses a moral dilemma and this is a great one! Three siblings, one terrible secret and, the kicker for me, a small child’s welfare and happiness at stake. What would you actually do?!

Youngest sibling Frannie reflexively calls her brother and sister when she needs help at the scene of an accident but fails to call the emergency services. When they arrive they realise that what has happened is worse than they ever could have imagined and set about helping Frannie to stay out of jail.

As the days pass, we start to feel increasingly uneasy, as though nothing is quite as it first seemed. I wasn’t quite sure who was in collusion with who, who was telling the whole truth and who was bending it. We see how the guilt, pressure to keep quiet and fear of discovery, start to affect their everyday lives and relationships, until they each start to make little mistakes, which threaten to expose them all.

This is a tense and, at times, quite emotional read with family at its heart. I genuinely couldn’t put it down. With thanks to Michael Joseph for gifting me a digital copy of the book to review.

This was quite a good thriller with twists I didn't expect, though I'm not sure about the way it ended.

The family clearly have an unhealthy relationship given how much time they spend with each other which makes for an interesting story. It does make you think what you would do if your sibling needed your help and just how far you'd go to protect them.

I loved the way Gillian made this into a before and now story in order to slowly release new information that I wasn'texpecting. I thought it was cleverly written and definitely one to recommend.

That Night shows that, sometimes, family bonds will test you to the limit…
Our story begins in Verona, where the three surviving Plant siblings were on holiday. Cathy is woken by a frantic call from her younger sister, Frannie, asking for help. She has been involved in an accident, a man is dead…and it’s someone they were seen arguing with earlier in the day. Most people would talk sense into their relative, call an ambulance and support them with whatever the consequences were. Cathy and her brother, Joe, are not most people. They help to bury the body, and what we then see is how this one fateful night impacts on them.
The narrative is split into then and now sections. While it would be easy to give details away, the success of this depends on you learning key information as it is revealed. Things are - perhaps we should expect this - not what they appear to be, and as we learn more about the Plant family we come to understand why they are in the situation they are in.
A genuinely entertaining read, even if the situation is one I cannot imagine getting into.

Frannie calls her brother and sister in the early hours begging for their help. She has commited a crime and needs help covering it up. They agree to help because she's family but just how far are they willing to go to keep her secret?

This had the potential to be a really good story but sadly for me it didn't quite deliver as much as I had hoped. I couldn't quite get myself truly invested in the characters. The plot itself is quite slow and jumps from present to back to the incident so it gives you a slightly more detailed look at how everything came together but I found the ending a bit more vague than I would have liked. It lacked the detail of how everything came together. An interesting story but not for me.

That night is a story of family bonds and how far you would go to protect each other.

The story is told in different POV's and I felt this helped the story. Tou flick between the present and the past which is done well and the story is well written with flawed characters.

A good read.

After seeing the author’s name around and hearing so many high praises for her books c I knew I must read this story. It was my first novel by the author and won’t be the last I’ll be reading for sure.
When it comes to family and siblings, most of us are willing to go beyond and above everything to help one of them when in need but how far would one go though?
This story tested a well tied knot between the three siblings and after helping each other covering a murder that apparently was actually an accident, everything becomes messy and the lies don’t flow as expected.
Told in multiple POV, I enjoyed the writing and the overall experience because I was invested in the story and wanted to know what actually happened that night, but somehow over the second part of the book, things can get a bit mixed up and a bit difficult to follow the train of events for me.


Very grateful to the publisher for my review copy through NetGalley

If you received a phone call from a loved one in the middle of the night, would you help them? Even if they've done something wrong? Something illegal? Something deadly?

This is what happens to the Plant family, when the youngest sibling Frannie calls sister Cathy and brother Joe. She has done something bad. And she wants them to help.


I've never read anything from Gillian McAllister before. I requested this book during a bit of a NetGalley request frenzy, and therefore neglected it for a while. I finally picked it up... And I'm glad I did!

That Night takes us from Verona to the UK, and we follow Frannie, Cathy, Joe and Joe's wife Lydia, as they come to terms with their dangerous decision.

McAllister is a very good writer. She controls this story - we find out the vital information when she wants us to. I very much enjoyed this, and I will definitely read more from McAllister!

Thanks to Gillian McAllister, NetGalley, and Penguin for this copy.

I’d like to thank Sriya Varadharajan from Penguin Michael Joseph for inviting me to take part in the blog tour. I have read three of Gillian McAllister’s books before and could not wait to get my hands on a copy of this one.

Gillian McAllister has done it again. She has delivered another great read, possibly my favourite of hers yet! That Night follows the journey of three siblings; Frannie, Joe and Cathy. We are thrown straight into the action when Cathy and Joe decide to help Frannie cover up a murder. From there the story flicks between that night in Verona and when the siblings return home to the UK determined to keep their secrets hidden.

I loved the alternating POV between the siblings and the excerpts with the lawyer, Jason. Gilliam McAllister did a superb job of making you think one thing was going on and then taking you down a completely different path. I could understand the bond between the siblings, having five sisters myself I know I would drop anything to help them. I did find Frannie and Joe harder to like but I think this was the authors intention. Cathy was by far my favourite. She seemed to show remorse for what they had done and whilst she was willing to help Frannie she couldn’t take some of the drastic steps that her siblings took.

Throughout the story I could feel the tension building. The cracks were beginning to show between the siblings and I started to question where the story would lead. We see just how far each sibling will go to protect themselves and the final reveals/twists were not only executed brilliantly but believably. The trail of breadcrumbs were left for us to pick up on but as usual Gillian McAllister was the master of misdirection.

This latest thriller will draw you in with the first chapter and have you holding your breath until the final conclusion. It is tense, gripping and packed full of drama!

I enjoyed this dark story about three siblings who live in each others pockets until the night in Italy when a man is killed and two siblings try to help another.

After hiding the crime, how will they cope with the guilt? Who can they trust with the secret? Can they trust each other?

I will be sharing my full review on the blog tour.

I've now read three of Gillian McAllister's novels, including this one.

In That Night, the story kicks off with a frantic phone call made to Cathy Plant by her sister Frannie, one sultry night in Italy. Frannie claims to have murdered someone unintentionally. Cathy dashes to Frannie's part of their large shared villa and finds her brother, Joe already there, with Frannie who has blood on her. A man is lying on the ground, his skin waxy and there is more blood; it's everywhere. Fran asks her siblings for their help to bury the body and they agree, but on their return to England, they become entangled in their own spiders web of lies.

This well-written story flows beautifully and is tense, gripping, and tightly plotted. There are a couple of brilliant twists awaiting the unsuspecting reader. Gillian McAllister is a master at pulling you into that all-important question; "What would I do?" if faced with a similar situation involving a much-loved member of the family. As the lives of the three siblings unravel, secrets are unearthed and there are lies and intense drama in spades with never a dull moment. That Night is an emotional read at times as events take their toll on the Plants, as it swells towards a cracking finale. Very highly recommended.

I received a complimentary copy of this novel at my request from Penguin Michael Joseph via NetGalley. This review is my own unbiased opinion.

While holidaying in their Verona villa, Cathie and Joe receive a call from their sister, Frannie, who has hit a man with her car. In her panic to protect her young son, Frannie persuades the siblings help her bury the body and hide any evidence of wrongdoing. But when they discover that the victim was actually a policeman, and with the Italian police sniffing around, can they hide their secret from justice?

I really wanted to enjoy That Night, as I felt there was a good storyline waiting to emerge, but it just seemed too preposterous to believe. Would two vets really just bury a body in Italian woods? Even to protect their sister, this was a jump too far. I did like the uncertainties in the ‘Now’ chapters, with not knowing who was speaking, and how everything was going to pan out, but for me it didn’t make up for the beginning.

Sadly not a book I would recommend.

Surprisingly for a book from Gillian McAllister I found this rather hard work to be bothered finishing. I couldn’t go along with something that happened very early in the story so I think I just failed to get absorbed like I usually would. Interesting concept but too clumsy for me.