A fun trip. three couples, friends since high school, Turns out it was far from fun!
An edgy fast paced thriller which kept me guessing until the very end.
Excellent storyline with well written characters.
My thanks to netgalley and the publisher for my copy.

a very twisty, locked-room murder that definitely kept me guessing until the very end. there were many times I felt that I'd worked it out only to be proven wrong again and again. the pacing was great and I enjoyed the characters, even the more I enjoyable ones. I was hooked right up until the end, and I have well and truly decided I need to read more Jack Heath thrillers.

maybe my next group weekend away will be a little more hesitantly planned after reading this one, although I can assure you that the activities undertaken by the couples in this book will CERTAINLY NOT be happening 😂

Since I’m such a sucker for a locked room mystery I was fiendishly lured into this one, even knowing it would probably be just a standard thriller. Here you’ve got three couples trapped at a mountain retreat and….wife swapping! Well, um, OK. And why is it “wife” swapping? Sounds like some standard 1970s style sexism to me. But I digress.

By the next morning, when the cops show up, led by Elise, going through her own romantic issues, there are two men dead, two women and one man alive and one woman missing. So, helpful advice…wife swapping with your friends when you are stranded IS A REALLY BAD IDEA. I’m going to go a bit further and say it may not be so great with strangers, either, but what do I know?

The book is about what happened during the missing hours. The weird part is that, despite the fact there’s no indication of it anywhere, it seems like there should have been a first book outlining what happened to Elise’s partner, because clearly it could have been a book, and it’s alluded to multiple times. Oh, plus, officer Elise who is assigned to the case treats her girlfriend, who she’s on the outs with to a weekend away AT THE MURDER HOUSE which strikes me as both gross and grossly unethical. So there’s that. I get mad when my husband suggests eating at a chain restaurant.

So, I don’t know. It wasn’t awful. I didn’t figure out who did it. The first book, the one never written, sounds like it might have been good.

#TheWifeSwap #NetGalley
A fab read. 5 ⭐
Three couples, friends since high school, arrive at a remote mountain retreat ready to unwind and catch up. When an innocent remark of swapping partners is made, they laugh it off as a joke. But after a few glasses of wine, it doesn't sound like such a bad idea. With the lights off, it's not really cheating if you don't know who you're with, right?But come morning, one of the husbands is found dead in the sheets. Suspicion grows between the friends, and no one is willing to come forward and confess what they know. With no phone service and the car keys missing, they're now stranded on the mountain with no way down. And the killer is just getting started...
Holy moly what did I just read? Wonderful written Book with lots of cliffhangers. I was hooked.
Thanks to NetGalley and Embla Books for giving me an advance copy.

Some couples would kill for a weekend away... It was supposed to be a fun trip. Three couples, friends since high school, arrive at a remote mountain retreat ready to unwind and catch up. When an innocent remark of swapping partners is made, they laugh it off as a joke. But after a few glasses of wine, it doesn't sound like such a bad idea. With the lights off, it's not really cheating if you don't know who you're with, right?! Well this went a totally different direction than I expected! lol Good read though! This book was exciting, great suspense, intriguing, action, murder, mystery, a fantastic who done it and some crazy twists and turns! The storyline was very interesting and kept me glued to my kindle! I definitely recommend reading this book! Thank you NetGalley and the publisher for sharing this book with me!

Wife Swap is a novel by Australian author Jack Heath that follows on from his previous novel, Kill Your Brother, featuring several of the same characters and set in the same rural NSW town of Warrigal. Real estate agent Oscar is happy enough to go along on a weekend in an isolated mountain cottage with two other couples, his wife Isla’s school friends, mostly because he has certain expectations about another of the guests.

There are some close friendships within the couples, a financial planner, a stand-up comedian, a gym owner and a fitness model and, while things aren’t exactly as expected on arrival, they rub along fairly well despite different temperaments, even (eventually) agreeing to partake in a risqué plan. Does that go well? As one of their number is found dead in the hot tub afterwards, clearly not.

When an obviously traumatised wife manages to make her way down the mountain on foot, raving about a murderer on the loose, Detective Sergeant Kiara Lui has charge of her first case. She is able to temper the response of the enthusiastic armed response team enough to recover a very frightened couple from the house, discovering two dead husbands, and learning that one of the wives is missing. And each survivor is telling a different story.

Frustrated by the lack of insight produced by witness interviews, and the delay in results of the DNA collected by Warrigal’s inept crime scene technician, Kiara decides to take her girlfriend, Elise, who desperately needs a break, for a weekend up to the (thoroughly-cleaned) murder house, where she might get a better feel of just what happened. But are they safe in this isolated spot with no mobile phone coverage and one of the party still missing?

Heath uses multiple narrators to tell a tale that is cleverly plotted, with twists that might require pre-booking a chiropractic appointment, well-disguised clues and red herrings to keep the even the most astute reader guessing right up to the exciting climax. The reader will wonder about the reliability of some of that narrative, but even as the story ventures into very dark territory, there is some (quite black) humour to relieve the tension.

Heath’s characters are believable for all their flaws and failings, and he captures the feel of the NSW country town with consummate ease. There are some spoilers for the earlier book, so reading Kill Your Brother first is advised. Readers of his Timothy Blake series know they will be in for a wild ride, and the best advice is to just go with the flow for an action-packed and very entertaining dose of Aussie intrigue.
This unbiased review is from an uncorrected proof copy provided NetGalley and Embla Books