I am so glad I decided to pick up this book as I’d never have guessed what it would be like! A psychological suspense like no others, with unexpected characters and even more unexpected events!

Everyone loves a grandma right? And everyone loves Maggie at the Royal Karnak hotel in Egypt, where she escaped not just from the pandemic like many others, but from a much more thorny situation. And because of her impulses, she starts again meddling into the lives of some of the hotel guests, not realising that when she starts engaging with Tess and her son Otto, it will probably be her downfall.

I never read anything like this book, not only for the very opposite main characters, an octogenarian and an 8-year old boy, but also for the turn of events and the abrupt ending which hits the reader like a slap in the face!
I very much enjoyed it throughout, and I couldn’t wait to get to it every time I could. This is mostly due to the narrator Maggy-Med Reed, who captured Maggie's nasty soul so perfectly!
I found the skin condition Maggie suffers from, a light homage to The Picture of Dorian Grey, becoming worse as her thirst for revenge becomes stronger and eviler.

I must admit that I was shocked by the abrupt ending, and I expected a bit more, but I also understand that it is probably the perfect way to end it, as it leaves the reader with so many questions, so that this story retains its place in the brain long after the last page.

If you like psychological suspense full of revenge and secret plotting, with characters you wouldn't expect, I suggest this read!

Thanks to the author, HarperCollins Audio, The Borough Press and NetGalley for an audiobook and this is my honest opinion.

Thank you to Netgalley and the author for the audiobook ARC.

First of all, wtf did I just listen to? 😂

81 year old Maggie has left it all behind. After the death of her husband Peter and the tragic loss of her daughter Julia, she fled her home in Wisconsin and has spent the last five years travelling and living in the world’s luxury hotels. Now she has now find one where she wants to stay, the Royal Karnak Hotel in Luxor. She had to leave a hotel in Switzerland due to ominous circumstances before this so she is running from her past.

She is nosey and likes to meddle and "fix" people's lives.
When she sees Tess and her 8 year old boy Otto she wants to put herself in their lives. Little does she know that Otto will be her biggest rival and bring everything she has been trying so hard to keep going to a tense stand still.

The conflict between the old and the young in this cat and mouse trope is brilliant.

This book was really good and hearing the sanity start to falter in our main character is well writen.
The end seemed quite abrupt but otherwise this was a good psychological thriller.

Slow-going with lots of repeated explanations. I got bored and DNF at 30%. It was another poor attempt by a male author to narrate the long, eventful life of an elderly lady. Sometimes I think they just don’t get the emotions right.

Maggie(81) has had it all & is now in search of peace as the final years of her life come to pass. Finding a new home at the Royal Karnak Hotel in Luxor (Egypt), she is finally settling in. Her stay would have been more peaceful, had she been a little less nosy 7 manipulative towards the situations & humans around her. But she finally finds a competitive match in an 8-year-old boy & the two seem to be spiralling down in an entangle of death and delusion, creating havoc at the hotel.

The best thing about this book was its writing style. The descriptions and the narration made me immerse myself all in! Maggie's character is so strong, I felt everything she felt (the anger, the exasperation, the confusion & even the tiredness of climbing those stairs). Now I did feel the story dragged a bit in the middle, but the above 2 things kept me going.

Towards the final moments of the story, the incidents escalate next level, grabbing the reader's attention to an end you won't picture coming. It was sudden, unpredictable & absolutely shocking!
P.S. The covid lockdown angle addition worked so well with the plot.

Thank you NetGalley, HarperCollins UK Audio and the author for this ALC in exchange for an honest review

Oh the dangers of meddling...

This was a fun ride, the beginning was slow but once things started moving I did not want to put the book down. 
Maggie is one devious lady and Christopher Bollen fully explores her motivations and why she has this impluse to 'help' and her beef with Otto was utterly entertaining. This book shows that Maggie and Otto are two sides of the same coin. 
Maggi-Med Reed as the narrator was incredible and really enhanced the reading experience for me. The ending was just Wow.

This story follows a new trend of fiction, particularly thriller/crime fiction, with an elderly protagonist.
We follow Maggie Burkhardt at the Royal Karnak, someone who takes it upon herself to meddle in the lives of other hotel guests in the aim of freeing them from their doomed relationships. We are introduced to Otto, a boy who finds out about her secret role.
Maggie is the protagonist and through her narration we come to dislike and despise Otto, as we watch the escalation in their revenges it reaches a climax and lives are ruined. Maggie is an unreliable narrator as we find out, but I am someone who dislikes abrupt and ambiguous endings so I wish it was more clearer. Ultimately Otto is evil and I hate him, also his mother and Zacks constant excuse and inability to see ottos disturbing behaviour was infuriating.
I enjoyed the story but it did take a while to get into the story and there were some parts where it did drag and nothing much happened, but it was interesting and I liked it.

Also this book is set during the COVID lockdown so there is a lot of mention of it which was jarring, it's not something I want to read so be warned.
4.5⭐/5

What a curious tale! It had me totally engrossed; such an unusual premise and Maggi is a highly entertaining character. Devious in the extreme, manipulative and very original. I really enjoyed her warped perspective and desire to ‘help’ those she considered in need. She’s acutely observant and I enjoyed her asides whilst in Luxor; just small details she noticed about people and their behaviour which informed her views and conclusions. The first part is a slow burn as we get to know Maggi and her backstory. The death of her husband and daughter and a dark past hinted at. Why did she flee the USA? What’s brought her to Luxor. Then she rocks up against an 8 year old Otto. Superb. What a pair!

This is a truly original story. I loved the narration throughout which felt very much like Maggi’s ‘voice’ and I’ve polished this off in a couple of glorious sittings. It’s quirky, amusing, dark and very unusual, but I lived it for being different.

This high quality audio left me with a what the hell did I just listen to. It was a short lusten which left its mark on me. Maggie was a very dark character voiced perfectly. The plot itself got going more in the second half and despite its dark nature and overtones the narrator did a fab job of keeping me engaged. I binged this as I wanted to know and understand. The truth and the madness were not resolved for me. The ending did not leave me fulfilled but this was impressive. The chatacter of Maggie had real deprh and history that played out to make me wonder where the tealitu eas. Her pov at time gave me me chills. This was entertaining and skillfully written and narrated. I think it leaves the listener wanting more. Perfect for anyone who likes a dark mystery but be warned it may not be resolved. Entirely.
Thanks to netgallery and publisher and author and narrator

81 y/o Maggie, a long-term hotel guest, has an insatiable need to ‘help’ people

✨ Read if you enjoy: unusual pairings, psychopaths, cat and mouse
✨ Don’t read if you loathe: covid based stories, open endings, unreliable narrators

I highly recommend listening to this audiobook. Maggi-Med Reed’s performance is outstanding. Her accents are on point and I loved the direction - bravo to the production team

Slow to start, I liked Maggie very much. Her obsession to “help” people was questionable and I wondered if she was actually helping or actually just causing chaos in peoples’ lives

The pace speeds up as Maggie and 8 year old Otto go head to head. By then it was easy to adore Maggie and detest Otto! What a terrible child and wonderful villain

I truly loathe an open ending and unfortunately, we got one here. I won’t say more as I don’t want to spoil the experience for others, but I think it’s an important element to know before going in

Thanks to Netgalley and HarperCollins UK Audio for access to this audiobook ARC in exchange for my honest review

Twisty, degenerating story of sanity and morality - between two unlikely foes.

4.5 stars

Quite a plot. Maggie is in her 80s, and settled in at the Royal Karnak hotel on the banks of the River Nile. Mostly because she had to leave her previous residence in a Swiss hotel under dubious circumstances, but she's a permanent and respected resident, with routines and a role to play, which seems to involve keeping an eye on other hotel guests and meddling in their relationships when she believes it necessary.

Maggie is a grieving widow, who's also lost a daughter, so when she sees a young mother with an 8-year-old son coming to stay, she affixes herself to them and begins to see if she can 'assist' their clearly troubled family, with the boy's father working overseas.

But little Otto, aged 8, becomes gradually to show other sides to his personality as Maggie pushes her own agenda onto them and the other guests. And what seemed a simple story about a lonely and probing old woman becomes a two-hander as Otto appears to have his own mischief and wilful desire to play with people's lives. Under the heat of the scorching sun, what exactly is going on? Where will it end?

You felt you could never really believe or trust what seemed to be happening here, I mean: an 81 year old woman intruding in marriages and an 8-year-old boy scheming to cause his own havoc...?

This made a very disconcerting narrative as an audiobook, as we only have Maggie's voice and point of view. Which, as we go further into her mind, is clearly hiding things from both us and itself.

Loved the stripping away of the layers and the past, was never fully happy seeing a young boy in this role, but mostly because my own son is that age and the idea terrifies me!

Maggie's voice was strange though, as we have an 'old lady voice' when she speaks directly yo other characters but a younger voice when we are still inside her head. This confused me at first and made me think it was two different characters, but I suppose it makes good sense that the internal voice we talk to ourselves with is probably always young and doesn't have to match our outer appearance... also a good metaphor for the story.

It's not straightforward, and it's not comfortable, but it is quite thrilling and it won't disappoint, all the way to the very last page.

With thanks to Netgalley for providing a sample audio copy.

*Many thanks to Christopher Bollen, HarperCollins UK, and NetGalley for a free adudiobook in exchange for my honest review.*
An interesting idea to confront a lady in her 80s and a young boy as adversaries, and for the reader to guess who the reliable character is. The plot did not keep me on the edge of my sofa, however, I expected an unexpected, and was rewarded in a way in the final moments.
Not especially engaging, HAVOC is a decent audiobook, and the narrator does a great job using two different ways of interpreting the inner Maggie, who is the narrator, and the way she addresses her interlocutors.

Havoc is a psychological thriller filled with amazing twists. While I was reading, I envisioned a different ending, but the author caught me off guard. The story is definitely darker than I expected, and the ending made me want to read the book again. I was shocked and did not see it coming. Maggie is a very reliable narrator until you read the final pages. I enjoyed the story, but I also loved the audiobook version. The narrator did an amazing job bringing the characters to life. I highly recommend this book. Thanks to Netgalley and HarperCollins UK Audio for the audio arc in exchange for my honest opinion.

In a Luxor hotel amid the COVID lockdown, a battle of wills begins between a meddlesome octogenarian and a manipulative seven-year-old. Determined to 'win' both will go to some extraordinary lengths, no matter who or what gets in their way. A testament to the tenacity of the old and the ingenuity of the young, this war will keep you entertained from beginning to end.

Thank you Netgalley ,HarperCollins UK Audio | The Borough Press for the audio Arc of Havoc
Narrated by Maggi-Med Reed

Havoc is a slow to medium twisty thriller with a psychological edge. This book follows a shrewd 81 yr old women who has turned her back on her old life and begun a new one in Luxor, Egypt. Don't be fooled, this shrewd women gets under your skin, meddling in everyones lives. Until she meets Otto, a 8yr old boy. Who may just beat her at her own game.

It's not often I come across a satiric psychological thriller that I like but this was the bomb! Christopher's writing style balanced the character building and the dynamics between other members that are also staying at the hotel superbly. The humour within plot direction was well placed and made me laugh even though it was bordering inappropriate. The pay off at the end was well timed and poignant. You can't go wrong with a twisty thriller with an unreliable narrative!

4.5 stars for Storygraph and 5 stars for other review sites.

SPOILERS


This left me feeling a little uncomfortable, because surely I should not be entertained by someone threatening death and violence on an 8 year old....
Yet I was!
This is actually a very entertaining read, Maggie comes across as slightly unhinged from the start, but increasingly unreliable as the story goes on.
As for Otto, he seems a right one.
Fun, and a little bit twisty.
I raced through it.