Stay Home

Stay home, stay safe is the theme of the pandemic lockdown in England. Caitlin does neither. Although she considers herself happily married, she’s been having an affair with Daniel, a gorgeous man who’s fifteen years younger. After three weeks inside with her husband James and teenage twins Harry and Ellie, Caitlin decides to use her daily one hour outside for exercise to run to Daniel’s house for a surprise visit. It’s a surprise all right. Daniel is dead.

What Caitlin doesn’t know as she flees the house is that she’s being watched. Ali, the neighbor across the street, is an alcoholic who has been fired from her job. She uses her spare time while sober to watch her neighbors and she’s learned a lot about Daniel. Using her exercise time again, Caitlin returns to Daniel’s house to make sure there’s nothing there to link her to him. She meets Ali and, although these two women are very different, decides to work with her to solve the murder to avoid suspicion. What happens next is a wild trip to a nail-biting, totally shocking conclusion.

A murder mystery set during the limitations of a pandemic lockdown is an intriguing idea and Ava Pierce has certainly delivered a book you won’t want to put down. The characters, especially Ali, are well described and seem real. The story itself is very visual and would make a wonderful movie. 5 stars.

Thank you to NetGalley, Hodder & Stoughton and Ava Pierce for this ARC.

Caitlin has been having an affair for almost a year when the country goes into lockdown. It becomes harder to see her lover Daniel, but one day she manages to sneak out to see him... only to find him dead. Meanwhile, Ali spends her lonely days drinking alcohol and watching her neighbours. Caitlin tries to keep the discovery of Daniel's dead body a secret, not realising that Ali has seen everything. It soon becomes a rush to discover the truth about who killed Daniel, before Caitlin gets the blame. She begins to find out things she didn't know about Daniel, and indeed many secrets about everyone start to come out during the lockdown...

A great book for the current situation with the virus and lockdowns. The story is thrilling and you are kept turning the pages until the very end. The twists and turns are shocking and the characters interesting. Definitely worth a read.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an advance copy of the book in return for my honest feedback.

#StayHome #NetGalley
A good read.
Caitlin has been having an affair for nearly a year when the country enters lock down. Suddenly, seeing her lover, Daniel, without alerting her husband becomes almost impossible. When she does manage to sneak to his home, she finds him lying in a pool of his own blood, dead.
STAY HOME
Ali is a just-about-functioning alcoholic, recently let go, and feeling rather lonely. Each day she goes to her local shop to buy her permitted two bottles of wine, leaving food parcels for neighbours on her way home. While keeping an eye on what they are up to, of course.
STAY SAFECaitlin can't tell a soul about what she has discovered for risk of losing her family. Little does she know that Ali has noticed her coming and going, and that she will be drawing her own conclusions.
As Caitlin delves into the life of the man who said he loved her, she finds that maybe she didn't really know him at all. But if she wants to avoid suspicion, she needs to keep digging until they find Daniel's killer.
Thanks to NetGalley and Hodder Straighten for giving me an advanced copy.

An exciting thriller that is perfect for current times: does lockdown justify the breakdown of a relationship? Can a person carry off a clandestine affair regardless? Highly recommended!

. Caitlin and her husband James and their teenage children Ellie and Harry experience the pain of being in a lockdown because of the covid 19 virus. Caitlyn had been having an affair for a year with a man named Daniel, but the lockdown made her trysts with him very complicated. How does one get out of the house when there is no reason to be out and it isn’t allowed? She vowed to end her affair now that it was increasingly difficult to see him but she decided to go see him one last time. Caitlyn then finds herself in a terrifying situation and doesn’t know where to turn. Many twists and turns ensue and you will find them shocking! A very unique and intense story that kept me turning the pages well into the night to figure out what was happening.

This book is set in March 2020 in the fist lockdown caused by the pandemic. Caitlyn had been having an affair with a younger man but decided to call it off and concentrate on her husband and teenage twins. One day she decides that she can’t stand staying away and decides to go and visit him using exercise as an excuse to go out. When she gets there she finds her lover has been murdered. She decides her best course of action is to leave and let someone else report it to stop her family discovering her affair. What she doesn’t realise is the woman across the road who is an alcoholic has seen her.

I really enjoyed reading a story set in England in lockdown whilst currently living through lockdown 2.0 . I will say that it is a bit of a slow start until you get beyond the synopsis of the story. After that though the story seemed to fly by. The story was a bit different to what I had expected from the synopsis. the characters are all flawed but I really appreciated that and made the story more realistic. There are quite a few twists and turns throughout the story but that didn’t stop me guessing the ending. I enjoyed the author’s writing style and will definitely be looking out for any future releases.

A different, enjoyable and very timely read being based during lockdown. Secrets, lies, affairs, unruly teenagers and an alcoholic make a surprisingly good combination!

"Stay Home - Stay Safe", is a phrase that applies to Caitlin in many different ways. As a consequence of the broken rule, Caitlin pays an unusual price. Well... technically not Caitlin herself, but her year-long lover. After finding Daniel in a pool of his own blood, Caitlin is drawn even more to the scene of the crime.

While in the world's biggest and longest lockdown, Daniel's neighbor Ali finds herself in a bit of a pickle herself when she accidentally stumbles into his cold body. Shocked by such a horrifying find, for the first time in months Ali no longer finds comfort on the bottom of a wine bottle. Instead, driven by curiosity, she decides to play a detective and digs a bit farther than needed into Daniels cyber life.

And that's how Caitlins and Ali's roads cross. But Caitlin's nightmare is far from over. Secrets, like skeletons in a closet, start to come to open one by one. She keeps wondering if she would have stayed home on that one fatal day - would she have been safe now?

Such a fun and entertaining read. I absolutely loved the short list of the characters and their involvements in the story. And the storyline itself kept on moving tremendously fast which made me flip the pages of the book with rapid speed. Thank you, NetGalley and Hodder & Stoughton publisher for an advanced copy of this wonderful novel.

I was worried that the first book I read set in the pandemic would be tiring and hackneyed. I needn't have worried after reading Ava Pierce's masterful handling of a topic that could have been so much gloomier.

Rather than describing the plot, as it is succinctly detailed in the description, I’d like to describe how the author handled this very touchy subject.

Instead of the book being "about" the pandemic, she has used the worldwide health crisis (as it was handled in England) as a backdrop to a suspenseful murder mystery. What's worse than trying to hide an affair? Trying to maintain the affair in a lockdown! And what's more suspicious than creeping into a dead man's house? Creeping in during a lockdown!

We are first introduced to Ali, who while pretty much a recluse to begin with, is now an alcoholic recluse, with an inquisitive mind, and even more of a nosey neighbor now that she's forced to stay in. At first, I really disliked this character, and felt her "voice" was all wrong. But as the narrative deepens, you see that she's just a lost soul, really in need of a purpose in life. Caitlin thinks she has lockdown all figured out, creating a faux exercise routine as her excuse to see her lover. And once he's dead, she's got to figure out how to handle her pretend exercise routine, without drawing the suspicion of her family. She needn't have worried, as they get caught up in their own dramas.

Pierce has managed to sprinkle details of the pandemic throughout the book, without it swallowing the story. If you're like me, almost any book or movie with large crowds, people sharing food, or touching each other, gives you pause at the moment. But Stay Home doesn't feel as foreign - or as dystopian - as it would have a year ago. The author reminds us of so many situations that have changed since March, but the scenarios flow smoothly and are so well integrated into the plot, they are seamless.

Beyond that, it's just a darn good story! After Ali's long narrative, the book starts to take off, and things just get worse and worse for poor Caitlin, as she tries to salvage first her marriage, and then her family. You'll think you know what happens next, but you won't be ready for the twists!

I can't wait to see what this author does next!

Thanks to NetGalley and Hodder & Stoughton for an advance reader's copy for review.

During lockdown #1 I became hooked on mystery/thriller/cosy murder books, and I was fascinated when I saw a book where the storyline included lockdown.

We already know from the summary/blurb that Caitlin finds her lover, Daniel, dead so I found the first part of the book too long. It wasn’t until I was about 20% in that I finally reached Caitlin coming across Daniel’s body. From then on, though, I was really hooked and found it hard to put the book down.

Caitlin is married with twin teenagers and seems to have the perfect life. She’s been having an affair with Daniel for about a year, apparently just because she could – not because of a shaky marriage. When lockdown starts, she struggles for a way to see him, and takes up running. It’s on one of these ‘runs’ that she discovers his garden doors open and his body lying in a pool of blood. She decides to just leave and say nothing, but she’s been seen. Ali, living opposite and up a floor, can see everything from her bay window and she’s seen Caitlin coming out. She goes over herself and she too sees Daniel’s body.

A brilliant read with a dark twist, and I’d highly recommend it.

Thank you to NetGalley and Hodder & Stoughton for an advance reader copy in return for an honest review.