I wasn't sure what to expect from this new author to me. But it was a very easy read and once I started I was immersed

Thank you for the opportunity to review

I was so excited to read this book but as I got more into it I felt unsure about where it was going, I thought it had a lot of potential when I started.

Very much a mixed bag for me, there were too many times when I had far more questions than answers.
At other times I could not put the book down.
There's an uncomfortable feeling for a lot of it, a slight air of things not being right.
It flits back and forth in time , and this adds to an unsettled air.
It had some very interesting parts.

A third of the way through this book, and I feel that all the going back and forth with the dates and years, is totally confusing me. I feel that I’m only engaging with these two characters completely so far, that is Michael and Frankie his mother. I know that Michael is a gifted musician who hears a male voice at night and suffers with bad dreams sometimes at night. And then there’s his mother, separated from the children’s father because, she no longer wanted to be on the farm. She too has bad nightmares sometimes, mainly about Michael. Apart from that, I know that John is her other older son who eventually is going to marry Olivia, his childhood sweetheart, and that’s about it. Being a third of the way through, I ought to know more than that about the characters involved as there are more, but I just don’t.

So as I read on, the second third starts off with Michael having a fit over seeing some cows being burnt, following the BSE crisis in 1997, while staying with his father. I have now learned that his father, Callum, told him that Frankie, his mother, hated him, which is total rubbish, and he has now gone away to to travel for a few months, following the end of his exams. Not corresponding with anyone from his family i.e. his mother or John his brother, who has now gotten engaged to Olivia. Then a mother‘s worst nightmare, the police at her door accusing her son of assaulting, sexually, a woman with a gun, which he stole from his father who, reported it missing to the police!What a bastard. The story is still skipping forwards and back in the timelines, I’m still confused. Apart from the one part, in 1978, where she has a miscarriage only to realise she’s still pregnant! So it turns out that Michael was a twin but nobody realised and Frankie thought he was evil!

But it is getting more interesting I suppose as the characters start to take shape. So although Michael has lost a lot of weight and looks very pale (there’s no suggestion that he’s actually taking drugs) he asks Frankie if he can move back in, or have some money, she says no, so he burns the house down with her inside. She’s peering out the window screaming for help, sees him and he just waves at her and walks on, what a fucked up family! I’m still fed up of being flung backwards and forwards through the years the mother is in Hospital and I just want to know how she’s doing and what happens next.
Anyway, I think the book is too long and they all die in the end there I said it! I don’t really recommend this book. It was a bit all over the place and it took awhile to figure out what was going on but the ending was good I suppose.