A bit weird but compelling and entertaining. It surprised me and kept me good. Excellent character developement and storytelling.
Recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher for this ARC, all opinions are mine

I enjoyed this - it’s gripping, has a brilliant main character and her whole arc just had me thrilled. This is a proper page turner and fans of Gone Girl will eat this up.

i can see this book appealing to readers looking for a pulpy sort of mystery novel where we follow a woman doing 'bad things'. i did think her characterization was a bit cheesy, trying too hard to be gritty

Worlds Collide..
Esther Ray takes an unusual post - a scrapbooking job from a wealthy client. The job entails documenting the clients marriage as a gift for her husband. There is a huge wealth of information and documentation and Esther uses her obsession with true crime podcasts to get her through the days. Then her client dies and Esther has her suspicions. Worlds are soon to collide and secrets will out. A genre bending dark mystery fuelled with a streak of dark humour, an eclectic cast and a sharp and searing look at the art world, at justice and at retribution.

No book has kept me so gripped since Gone Girl!!! The perfect blend of sinister commercial thriller and literary gold, loved it

Struggled with this one. Esther is not only unlikeable, she’s insufferable. This could have been a really creative approach to a thriller but it dragged and I ended up not caring who did what or why.

Based on the summary I was SO excited to read this as I thought that, with a scrapbook being a major part of the plot (and the title!) it would surely figure as part of the way the story was told - basically I thought this would be a “mixed media” type of book with extracts from the scrapbook scattered throughout the story. Turns out it is just a straightforward commercial thriller. I still found the plot interesting and everything, I just think this was a big
Missed opportunity for a more creative style of storytelling.

Calla Henkel once expressed a desire to write “Get in it and go for the ride thrillers,” this definitely fits the bill. Henkel’s narrator Esther Ray has quit, possibly fled, New York's art scene for a peaceful existence in the mountains with girlfriend Jessica, close to the hippy-retreat-turned-lesbian-haven Asheville. She spends her days crafting to a soundtrack of true crime podcasts. But when her life plan’s abruptly overturned, she finds herself embroiled in a real-life mystery, pulled back into the world she’d tried to leave behind.

Esther is a fascinating creation, prone to caustic observations, muttered witticisms, and morally dubious decisions, she’s clearly concealing a shady past. There’s also something slightly retro about her, her clothes, her attitudes bear traces of the amateur detectives found in vintage, lesbian/feminist crime novels. Like those women Esther is driven by an obsession with solving a possible crime. But what felt cosy in their stories has a more sinister feel in Henkel’s.

Henkel’s portrayal of the contemporary art world is wonderfully vivid and gloriously scathing. She’s brilliant at conveying its more feudal aspects, artists forced to butter up wealthy, vapid patrons looking for an investment or conversation piece to decorate their pricy homes. But then again Henkel’s writing what she knows here, she’s a well-regarded artist in her own right. She clearly knows her crime too. Her plot, her themes of reinvention, self-delusion, and deception form an inventive play on the work of writers like Gillian Flynn and Patricia Highsmith. Prickly outsider Rey often seems like a naïve, hapless version of Highsmith’s Ripley and, like Ripley, I found it impossible not to root for her – even at her most unlikeable.

I got the impression Henkel was enjoying herself here, she opens with lines from Derrida’s Archive Fever (Mal d’Archive) but makes his ideas the basis for a commercial thriller. She skilfully reproduces tropes and conventions from crime writing but engages in gentle parody at the same time. Yet she still manages to reflect on wider political and cultural issues: alienation; social media and narcissism; femicide and the overwhelming number of missing or discarded women. I was a bit thrown by the content of some later reveals, they felt a bit excessive - although compared to Flynn’s plots they’re positively minimalist. I was also uncertain about some of the ideas around the maternal here - but I can’t really go into those without giving away too much. But despite any and all reservations I really relished this one.

Bonkers.

Esther Ray is an artist who finds herself at a dinner for one of her far more successful artist friends. There she meets Naomi Duncan, an extremely rich woman who asks her to create scrapbooks of her entire marriage. Initially reluctant, Esther returns home to find her girlfriend has dumped & left her with the mortgage for their dream house in the mountains. She takes the job. Then Naomi dies and Esther is obsessed with finding out what happened to her.

This is wild? Kind of a mess? You will be reading it & thinking “okay girl” at most of the things Esther does. For a start someone has gotta pull the plug on her podcasts app. Step away from the true crime! It did feel like there were more and more details being added that were making less and less sense. You know what though? If you suspend disbelief (as I think is necessary with a lot of thrillers) then this does end up being a good time.

A really enjoyable mystery thriller. Not what I usually read but I’ve wanted to read Henkel for a while. This is about a woman who meets a billionaire at an art preview and the billionaire asks her to turn a bunch of her old keepsakes and papers into some scrapbooks. The artist agrees but then the billionaire woman dies and the artist woman goes absolutely batshit crazy trying to find out what happened.

The pacing was a bit off for me. It took me a while to get into it, but the middle section where all the action was happening really drew me in. There were issues I felt with some scenes feeling rushed but overall it was a really well plotted book and super easy and fun to read. I wasn’t sure about the ending and still don’t know if I liked it yet, maybe a bit too neat for my liking, but I did enjoy this book and am glad I branched out of my normal genres to read it.

From The Cover📖

Recently dumped and stuck with the mortgage, artist Esther Ray wants to burn the world, but instead, she reluctantly accepts a scrapbooking job from the deliriously wealthy Naomi Duncan. The scrapbooks, a secret birthday gift for Naomi's husband Bryce, trace the Duncan's twenty-five-year marriage. The conditions: Esther must include every piece of paper she's been sent, must sign an NDA, and must only contact Naomi using the burner phone provided. Otherwise she'll spoil the surprise.

As Esther binges true-crime podcasts and works through the near-two hundred-boxes of Duncan detritus, she finds herself infatuated with the gilded family - until, mid-project, Naomi dies suspiciously. When Esther becomes convinced the husband killed her, she uses the scrapbooks' trove of information to insert herself into the Duncan's' lives to prove it. But the more Esther investigates, the further she is dragged back to the scorched earth of her past and the famous artist who paid her to disappear.

Review ⭐️

From the synopsis I should have loved this book. From this I thought I was getting a unique modern tale on my favourite genre - classic golden age crime with a twist- I was thinking Erin Kelly meets Lisa Jewell…. Was so WRONG
What should have been an interesting concept , with the scarp book, amateur sleuthing and hints of dark secrets, is in a fact a self indulgent car crash.

Recalled in the first POV via Esther, this is books first failing as a character she is a riot all over the places full of self importance ,she is nasty,unlikable and for want of a better phrase a pain in the bum she isn’t a character I want to hear from in the first person. The writer has fallen into the trap of describing her thoughts and feelings over and over again so not only is she not very likeable character she comes across completely self-absorbed and boring, even in the parts about the investigation and other characters it becomes all about her much of which isn’t relevant to the plot and a lot of it seems slipped in at the point of edit to try make sense of the frankly bonkers conclusion.

The second failing is the fact the author has clearly put far too much of her own prejudices and judgment in the character, with lots of quite nasty remarks of which made me laugh as the writer clearly follows a woke agenda but her remarks and observations are far from woke but are in fact single minded and ill informed, the joke/remark about gay men and lupus I found quite appalling to be honest.

The third failing is the plot itself the main plot looses all traction as the novel goes on, it loses the focus and whizzes off in a number of directions that result in a broken very unrealistic ending, the author makes nods to Gone Girl thoughout any compassions between the masterpiece that is Gone Girl and this rubbish is highly insulting. The sub plots that are meant to illustrate Esther’s motives are farcical, in particular where her sense of justice comes from, her reactions to the outcomes of these sub plots is comical it’s like her full motive and character arcs were pointless.


This novel is all over the place jumping about with no firm plot, the sub plots are pointless with no firm threads , the ending is ridiculous, the characters badly written, and overall the novel reads like the inner thoughts of the authors own screwed up views.

This could have been brilliant as the initial concept was really quite unique but it was sadly let down.

Don’t waste your time reading this it’s only good for scrap.

I didn’t find this particularly gripping. Esther was a perfectly written character and I enjoyed her starting the scrapbooks for Naomi but something just didn’t click for me.

Calla Henkel is such an original author. I really enjoyed Other People's Clothes, and Scrap is just as good.
Esther is the main character in Scrap, she's a Craft artist, and has had a lot of traumatic incidents in her past.
She meets wealthy Naomi, who gives her a scrapbooking job. Esther finds out all about the family from Naomi's archive material and becomes curious about her life. This results in Esther getting herself into all sorts of situations, you don't know what she is going to do next, but the writing is so good, it all seems to make sense. It would s really funny in places. I loved Esther's impetuousness and her friendship with her neighbour Patrick. Highly recommended.

I loved every single minute of this book. Its dark and mysterious with a twisty, unexpected story. I went in blind and i highly recommend doing so. Full of surprises. A unique story that stands out from others in this genre xx

*ad-pr: I received a gifted copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts and opinions are my own.*

So this book has quite an unusual concept. A rich woman asks an artist to create a series of scrapbooks using boxes of family photos, documents and other things she’s saved over the years. The artist, Esther, soon realises that there’s a mystery to the stacks of bills and papers she’s been given and tries to work out why they’ve been kept.

Part thriller, part literary fiction, Scrap follows our troubled main character, the rich family she becomes entangled with, and her neighbour who lives hidden away in a solitary cabin like she does, focusing on both the mystery of the scrapbooking boxes and the emotional experiences of the wide array of characters.

The relationships between the characters are messy and chaotic but heartwarming, and the plot never quite goes where you’re expecting it to. They’re not cosy marshmallow characters, but flawed people with messy, shocking and sad pasts, and you quickly become drawn in by every one of them. The writing style is darkly comedic and kind of reminded me of Boy Parts by Eliza Clark, and the vibes were also similar, but the plot was completely different and felt very fresh.

I absolutely devoured this book. It was the kind of weird and intriguing story I can never get enough of, with a distinctive and memorable voice that had me highlighting quotes every other page. It’s such a strange, atmospheric and tense novel, and the wide range of interlinking story threads kept me engaged throughout. I wasn’t expecting to love this so much, but it’s definitely a new favourite!

This was an exciting read, from the scrapbooking job that is dark enough to murder and revenge, great build up of suspense and tension.

The novel is skillfully written, with a razor-sharp examination of the dynamics of wealth, power, and the art world. The author cleverly weaves together themes of justice, revenge, and the pursuit of truth, keeping readers on the edge of their seats. The dark humor adds depth and complexity to the narrative, providing moments of levity amidst the intense and suspenseful plot.

"Scrap" is a captivating and thought-provoking read that challenges the reader's perceptions of morality and the lengths one will go to seek justice. With its well-developed characters, intricate plot twists, and clever social commentary, this book is sure to leave a lasting impression. Whether you're a fan of mystery, thriller, or social commentary, "Scrap" is a must-read that will keep you hooked until the very last page.