Sharon Bolton's latest psychological thriller drops the reader surprisingly in the magnificent Antarctic and the remote island of South Georgia. It might be an awe inspiring landscape but it is also deadly and forbidding, with its glaciers, ice, turbulent and stormy sea waters and dangerous melt-waters. Resident glaciologist, Dr Felicity Lloyd is part of a research team, currently pursuing a theory on plug holes and the draining of lake water. She is feeling the strain as she awaits the last cruise ship, worried that she has not escaped far enough from her husband, Freddy, now released from Durham prison after completing a sentence for murder. She has plans to escape from Grytviken should her abusive husband turn up on the ship. She has informed her team that she will ostensibly be going to Bird Island but will instead make her way to Hurvik with its wreck The Petrel, a beached whaling ship, where a young woman, Bamber, roams with a gun in her possession.

It turns out Freddy is on the cruise ship and determined to find Felicity, irrespective of the obstacles that materialise, and he has one huge advantage, he knows her and the way she thinks. Just as you think you know the nature of what this story about, Bolton sharply swerves from this path and takes us back in time nine months, to Cambridge to a fragile and skittish Felicity, having to confront large periods of time where she has absolutely no idea what happened and what she did. She is worried someone is entering her home, there are strange journal entries and she is feeling stalked. She has an academic post at the University and is hoping to secure a job that will take her half way round the world to the Antartic, unfazed by working with a tiny team and isolated from the rest of the world, in fact it is what she feels she needs. She is seeing Dr Joe Grant, a therapist recovering from being stabbed by a young homeless woman, Ezzy Sheeran, skateboarding around the city where one rough sleeper, Bella has been murdered and another, Dora, is missing.

Once again, just when you think you know where Bolton is now taking her story, she returns us back to South Georgia, with many searching for Felicity, where she delivers another almighty twist in a chillingly thrilling climactic ending where numerous lives hang in the balance as nature demonstrates her terrifying powers for creating chaos and devastating destruction. This read was a four stars for me, until I got to the final part at which it became a wonderful five stars. This is a intense, dark and disturbing psychological thriller, tense, full of suspense and with all the trademark writing, plotting and twists for which Bolton is famed. A great read that I recommend highly to fans of Bolton and other crime fiction readers. Many thanks to Orion for an ARC.

What a brilliant psychological thriller from the super talented Sharon Bolton, loved, loved, loved it, raced through it and couldn’t put it down and what more do you need than that !!
So we start in part one of the book on South Georgia island where Felicity Lloyd a geologist is working as a research scientist but Felicity is scared someone is coming for her and even in the remoteness of this isolated island it seems they may have found her and fearing for her life she decides to run.
The book then follows on in a further three parts going back in time as we find out more about Felicity and this is a complex story with lots going on racing along at fair old pace and with twists and turns making it so damn hard to put down. It’s a compulsive read and with such a good storyline, the characters are as always in a Sharon Bolton book always so well crafted and believable and to date this has got be be my favourite book of her’s so far.
So a wonderful read and something different it’s a book I can highly recommend and many thanks to the author for keeping me up late as I so needed to finish the book !!
My thanks to NetGalley and Orion Publishing Group, Trapeze for giving me the chance to read the ARC in exchange for my honest opinion.

I enjoy many psychological thrillers but this one particularly stood out in it's plot/timeline/twists. The characters in the book were complex as was the plot yet not too hard to follow. I've only read one other book by this author but will look out for more.