Happy July friends! I hope you all had a wonderful 4th! I took some much-needed time off and must say, the stay-cation was just what I needed! I’m all set to jump back into blogging and think it’s pure serendipity that my first post back is a book review called The Vacation. If you like psychological thrillers, then the latest book by T.M. Logan, The Vacation is for you.
This is a sponsored post on behalf St. Martin’s Press, Booked Up All Night Reads. I received information to facilitate today’s post as well as an advanced reader copy of The Vacation, in the hopes I’d share my review here. All opinions are my own.
About The Vacation: On Sale July 21, 2020:
Seven days. Three Families. One Killer. If that doesn’t grab your interest, then, please scroll on past this post. I was so very excited to receive the ARC of this book in the mail! I wasn’t expecting to win honestly. I’m so glad I was selected to participate in St. Martin’s Press #BookedUpAllNightReads, because I’d never read any of the authors previous books, although I’d heard of his book Lies. More on him in a moment. Let me share the book synopsis with you now.
Synopsis:
“Four best friends on a dream vacation come face to face with an explosive secret. It was supposed to be the perfect getaway: Kate and her three best friends, spending a week with their families in a luxurious villa in the south of France. Through the decades they’ve stayed closer than ever, and seven days of drinking crisp French wine and laying out under the dazzling Mediterranean sun is the perfect celebration of their friendship. But soon after arriving, Kate discovers an incriminating text on her husband’s cell phone. A text revealing that’s he’s having an affair. And the other woman is one of her best friends. But which one?”
My Thoughts:
I wanted to LOVE this book and for the most part I did love it. You see, it’s been a while since I read a thriller, or any book that wasn’t strictly a learning or how to book, (see my recent book review here), so I wanted this book to sweep my away to that idyllic vacation destination, southern France. The author conveyed the location, the village, the intense heat of a Mediterranean summer’s day beautifully! It was the protagonist, Kate that I had a problem with. By the second chapter, I was already furrowing my brow at some of her less than mature reactions. Perhaps, this was done on purpose to draw the reader in, keep us turning the pages to see what Kate would say or do next.
I wanted to like these friends from college. I wanted to root for one of them, but that didn’t happen. I did start to feel bad for the kids midway through the book because the parents were so self-absorbed in running their own agenda’s, that the kids were left to their own devices far too often for my liking. I felt for them, wanted to know more about them and hoped for a happy ending for them! I did not get one.
There are plenty of twists and turns in The Vacation to keep you reading though. One by one, Kate accuses each of her friends of having an affair with her husband, (who has denied the whole mess), until you really aren’t sure who the mistress is.
What you are sure of is that each one of these adults has problems in their lives that this once in a lifetime vacation can’t fix and if they aren’t very careful, they will no longer be friends by the end of this vacation!
But what about the killer? Here is where the genius writing of T.M. Logan shines! I devoured the last few chapters of this book to find out who the killer was and why.
About the Author T.M. Logan:
source |
According to St.
Martin’s Press website, “T. M.Logan, the bestselling author of Lies, 29 Seconds and The Vacation, was
born in Berkshire to an English father and German mother, He studied at Queen
Mary and Cardiff universities before becoming a national newspaper journalist.
He currently works in communications and lives in Nottinghamshire with his wife
and two children.”
The Takeaway:
I truly enjoyed reading this book and do recommend it even
though there were some inconsistencies in the story line and threads of
conversation that I felt wouldn’t go that way in real life. I could tell that some
of the women’s dialog was written by a man. It was subtle, but there, nonetheless.
The author tied up all the loose ends nicely and the end of the book was good! This
makes for a perfect summertime read, and I think you’ll enjoy it as much as I
did.
I invite you to learn more about The Vacation, including
where to purchase it in two weeks by visiting St. Martin’s Press here and by following them on Instagram. I’d love it if you’d follow me on Instagram as well!
Please share in comments: Do you enjoy reading thrillers?
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