Mosaic

Thank you NetGalley and Severn House for the eARC.
Megan Melvick has come home after three years because her sister, Melissa, is dying. She's uneasy about it, her growing up with the family had been uneasy, to say the least. Her sister seemed to be the favorite and her feelings and memories of the way she was treated by Melissa are conflicted. She's deaf and prefers to be cloistered in her room, left alone with her dog, her books and her thoughts. Her best and only friend of her youth was killed in a fire before she left home and she misses her terribly, constantly thinking of the comfort she felt in her company.
This is a fantastic psychological thriller, I love all of Caro Ramsay's books and this one is right up there with the best. It's hard for me to say more about the story, I don't want to give anything away! But believe me, it's a corker, unputdownable! The ending was so good, finally explaining all the mysteries that kept me reading furiously late into the night. Highly recommended, 5+ stars.

5 stars

This book is told in two voices. Megan in the present day and Carla's, a close friend of Megan's. The two are very different young girls and as they age their voices become more mature.

There are strange things going on at the Melvick family home in Scotland.

Megan Melvick returns home reluctantly at the imminent death of her elder sister Melissa. She does not want to go back after her three year absence for there are too many bad memories there. Some people say the family is cursed and past events sure seem to bear this out. Suicides, abandonments, murder and mental illness are just some of the things that befall the unlucky family. But all is not as it seems in this stately mansion. There are things boiling beneath the surface about which none of the Melvick's are aware.

There was the suicide of Megan's grandfather, the tragedy that closed Melissa and her husband Jago's marriage party five years earlier, the disappearance of Beth, Megan and Melissa’s mother three years ago and the introduction of Carla, Megan's friend into the family. Along with a host of other characters, these people inhabit the novel as if they were all present and vying for attention.

I stayed up way too late reading this engrossing story. It surely kept me guessing as to what was going on. Was the Melvick family really cursed, or is there a more human source of their troubles?

After a bit of a confusing start, this novel took off. I really enjoyed it. It is extremely well written and plotted. The reader learns about Megan and Carla's friendship, but not quite enough to give out the answers! (That comes at the end.) This book has great character development and I found most of them to be likable. I was suspicious of some of them - some rightly and some wrongly. I can't believe that I missed reading Caro Ramsay before, but I will surely correct that now.

I want to thank NetGalley and Severn House for forwarding to me a copy of this absolutely wonderful book for me to read, enjoy and review.

Oh my! What a puzzle this was. A true mystery of Why?, When?, Who? What??

Set in Scotland on a huge estate bordering the Brenbrae and the Tentor Woods, dark, dangerous fairy pools that will suck you in and never let go. The rumors in town are that the family is all mad. Maybe too much inbreeding in the past. There are so many suicides there is always a rope on the hanging tree.

For the Melvick's life has been good. They have a mansion and all the money in the world. But they are all just a bit off.  Megan is deaf from some mysterious thing that happened to her as a child. So we think. Melissa is out of control crazy. Her mother left when Megan was 17 and hasn't been heard from since.

Megan left for the city and a job her father set her up in and a shrink he also set her up with.  Now she must return home. After three years because her sister, Melissa, is dying. Her sister manages only one word before she passes. Sorry. But for what? Being a horrible sister and all around jerk? Or for something more sinister.

This tale has more secrets than a priest! You could feel the tension from page one and it didn't let up. I was late for an appointment because I couldn't stop reading.

Told in Megan's voice as well as Carla's voice. Carla was Megan's only friend as well as a protector. And on Melissa's wedding night she was killed.

There was a lot of gaslighting going on here and I wasn't sure if any of them were stable! Is Megan truly losing her mind in the family tradition? Or is someone making her believe she is?

Full of chilling secrets, backstabbing, murder, child abuse and some magic this was one I will read again!

Very Well Done!

NetGalley/ Severn House Publishers October 1,2019

This is somewhat different than The authors books, I’m fact it is billed as a stand alone, but it still a fabulous book in its own right. Whilst it is a brilliantly written crime book, it is character driven, so much so that the characters take centre and every other part of the stage. The story uses multiple points of view with the three main characters being, Megan, her sister Mellissa and her friend Carla, both historically and contemporary. It is testament to Ramsay’s skill as a writer that, this works extremely well and the reader is not confused. With characters that lift of the page and a plot that entices and excites, this is a must read for all fans of Scottish Crime Fiction. I look forward to the next one already.

n a step away from her Anderson and Costello police procedural series, Caro Ramsay has taken a step out of her comfort zone with standalone psychological thriller, Mosaic. The question is was she going to take her readers out of their comfort zones and leave them disturbed and unsettled? Well, when I read THAT prologue, it quickly became clear that while Caro Ramsay may have taken a departure from her usual genre, her twisted mind remains as dark as always, promising me a dark and sinister journey!

In the very first chapter she conjures up a picture of Glasgow so disturbingly vivid I could almost feel myself slip into the pages and into the story as we joined Megan on her journey home to Argyll. The journey places the reader at the heart of the story providing them an authentic sense of place. Even when we reach Megan’s family home, we are taken over the doorstep, almost reluctantly, as we sense the toxicity of the place. The Italian House, as it is named, is as much of a character in this book as the people are. It’s a toxic character, however, devouring the lives of those who live there, of taking over them, sucking them in and refusing to let them leave

Megan’s sister, Melissa, is dying and so Megan has no choice to return home. But home was not a happy place and her return forces her to face the truth of the past. Narrated from Megan’s POV interspersed with the voice of Carla, Megan’s childhood friend, it makes for a kind of spooky backdrop going on as little hints are dropped as to what really happened. Keep your wits about you as you switch from past to present with both girls. It is well worth the concentration to appreciate the intelligent writing style of Caro Ramsay – and to appreciate her extremely dark mind!

The plot is exquisitely dark and the characters expertly drawn and they combine to make this an absolute masterpiece. It’s haunting at times, disturbing but also terribly sad. Each of the characters brings something to the tale; while it might be difficult to know who to trust, it is hard not to feel for them all in some shape or form.

Murder, suicide, madness and control all mixed together with a heavy dose of manipulation and liberally seasoned with a large pinch of secrecy create a highly suspenseful and compelling psychological masterpiece from one of Scotland’s top crime writers.

This is not to be missed!

“Mosaic” is a fascinating mystery focusing on elements of murder, madness, and manipulation. Add into that a fabulous estate in Scotland complete with formal gardens, wild areas, and a well-worn but patrician Melvick Italianate mansion. The action takes place in today’s world but the characters are complicated and compromised by their pasts. The three main characters are Megan, her best friend Carla and Melissa, Megan’s sister. Megan is on her way home to spend her time with Melissa, who is dying after a prolonged illness. A sense of dread, as ominous as Melissa’s pending death, immediately permeates the opening pages. Megan is not welcoming her own return. Her reasons are complicated by her feelings about Melissa and the rest of her family.

The story unfolds through two different viewpoints. Megan alternately sees her return to the Italian House as a return to safety, threat and imprisonment. She is not sure what to believe. Carla is the voice who speaks about the present and the past from a unique vantage point (no spoilers here). Think of the atmosphere of DuMaurier’s “Rebecca” meets “The Lovely Bones.”

Ramsay’s descriptions makes the reader want to roam the Italian House estate, but do so with great caution. There are many mysteries to solve here. Her plotting, characterizations and depictions of the upper and lower classes will appeal to many. Highly recommended.

The brilliant Caro Ramsay writes a standalone dark and disturbing psychological thriller that centres on the deaf Megan Melvick returning to her family home on the Brenbrae estate to see her dying favoured sister, Melissa. The Melvick family may be upper class and wealthy, but its history suggests that it is afflicted with a curse worse than the Kennedys. The malevolent Italian House drips poison, with the Melvicks held tightly in death's grip, with its alarming faerie pools and hanging tree in its grounds. 5 years ago at Melissa and Jago's wedding a tragedy occurred that Megan finds herself revisiting as the same people return to the house as funeral preparations are made. What exactly happened back then? Megan's mother left after the wedding, taking a few items, apparently running off with another man, and hasn't been heard of since. Will she make an appearance for the funeral? The narrative is related from the perspective of Megan and her only friend, the feral and in your face Carla, both outsiders drawn to each other, one locked in, the other locked out, with Megan refusing to give up Carla despite her family's efforts to dissuade her, citing her unsuitability.

Megan is not happy to return to her toxic home, aware that this time it is for good, she is, after all, the only surviving heir. She is not close to Melissa, puzzled by her last word to her, 'sorry', but sorry for what exactly? Carla may well have been a persona non grata, but as far as Megan is concerned, she had a direct honesty, unlike the Melvick stiff upper lip duplicity. She feels she owes it to Carla to find out what happened to her, as is it possible that Carla was not the target at the wedding? It doesn't take long before Megan begins to unravel, finding herself sleepwalking and plagued with unreliable memories, begging the question just how far can she be trusted. As she looks back in time, she has blackouts in her memories and is unaware at what point in her life she became deaf. What she does know is that the psychiatric doctor employed by her father, Dr Scobie, has made no improvements in her health, in fact, the drugs make things worse. In a narrative of dark secrets and class, where Carla's perspective is so revelatory, is it possible that the recent woes of the Melvick family are not a curse, but all too human in origin?

Ramsay writes a mosaic of a disturbing and unsettling murder mystery that is pieced together in a shocker of a conclusion by the local police officer in true Agatha Christie style with a gathering together of all the suspects. This is a fantastic read, atmospheric with a great sense of location, with great twists. The characterisations of the two main characters, Megan and Carla, along with the supporting cast is done with expertise and style, you cannot help but get your attention snagged by them. I love Caro Ramsay's Glasgow based crime series, and this is a brilliant standalone addition to her writing canon which I think so many crime and thriller readers will adore. Highly recommended! Many thanks to Severn House for an ARC.

Mosaic is a standalone crime thriller set in Scotland and expertly written by Caro Ramsay. Released 1st Oct 2019 by Severn House, it's 256 pages and available in hardcover, paperback, and ebook formats.

This one has a wonderfully gothic + golden age Christie-esque feel. There is even a manor house (on an island!) and a wealthy upper-class family with a tragic history. The narrative itself is written in alternating points of view, but the characters are so well delineated that it's never a problem keeping them straight whilst reading. The plot is full of tension and red herrings and I read the whole thing in awe of the author's control of plotting, drama, atmosphere. This is a technically scintillating book as well as being entertaining and a good read.

I have read so many thriller/crime books lately which had absolutely been written with film adaptation in mind. The scenes were set up and written as staged and directed for film. This book, refreshingly, was written as a book. The scenes and dialogue were not film sequences.

Really well written, dramatic tension and plot arc work well, characters are interesting and varied, setting is wonderful, the author (in my opinion) bobbled the denouement a bit, but overall the book is superb.

Four and a half stars, rounded up for the writing. One of my best reads for the year.

Standalone psychological suspense - engrossing, disturbing and dark with a family drama at its roots. A tension mounting tale which twists and turns with bags of atmosphere throughout culminating in a satisfying denouement reminiscent of a more traditional murder mystery. Excellent reading.

On my list of “most favourite reads for 2019”

The book opens with Megan Melvick remembering her fourth birthday in 1994. Her sister Melissa is allowed to light the birthday candles as she’s eleven. Before she has a chance to open her presents, her parents suddenly rush out of the room. Wanting to know what is more important than staying with her while she opens her presents, Megan follows and all that Megan can remember after that is seeing her grandfather swinging from a rope over the faerie pond. This memory comes to Megan as she starts her journey back to her home on the Benbrae Estate.

She’s been summoned to return as Melissa is dying from anorexia and her father has pleaded with her to return to bid her farewell. As she drives up to this magnificent home called “the Italian House” memories not only of this disastrous birthday accompany her, but also her friendship with Carla who was tragically killed on Melissa’s wedding day.

Once home Megan can’t help but keep going back to the memory of her best friend Carla’s murder. Nor can she stop thinking about her mother who simply walked out of the home the year Megan turned seventeen.

Megan is deaf and supposedly also suffers from Dissociative Identity Disorder. But besides being deaf can this DID be real?

Carla’s sudden death seems to have caused her spirit to linger and with Megan home, Carla can once again “come to life” telling us her story alongside Megan’s.

Caro Ramsay is one of my favourite authors. This book is totally different to her previous novels and in my opinion, has one of the most brilliant storylines with unique, very much alive characters who will not leave you long after you reach the final page.

Bravo Caro, you’ve absolutely won my “novel of the year”. Thank you for allowing us to meet characters like Megan, Carla, Drew and Melissa.

Treebeard

Breakaway Reviewers received a copy of the book to review