Greenwich Park by Katherine Faulkner #NetGalley @BloomsburyRaven @k_faulkner #GreenwichPark

 

Greenwich Park by Katherine Faulkner

Published by Bloomsbury Publishing, Raven Books

Publication Date: 15th April 2021

Genre: Mystery & Thrillers

My thanks to the publisher for allowing me access to this title, however I admit that it sat on my virtual shelf for so long that I ended up borrowing a copy from my library and entering my first ever buddy read with my daughter which we recorded via the Storygraph app. 

Book Description:

Helen has it all...

Daniel is the perfect husband.
Rory is the perfect brother.
Serena is the perfect sister-in-law.

And Rachel? Rachel is the perfect nightmare.

When Helen, finally pregnant after years of tragedy, attends her first antenatal class, she is expecting her loving architect husband to arrive soon after, along with her confident, charming brother Rory and his pregnant wife, the effortlessly beautiful Serena. What she is not expecting is Rachel.

Extroverted, brash, unsettling single mother-to-be Rachel, who just wants to be Helen's friend. Who just wants to get know Helen and her friends and her family. Who just wants to know everything about them. Every little secret…

My Thoughts:

The first thing I have to say about this book: why did I wait so long to read it?! My daughter and I were looking for an appropriate book to try out the buddy read function on the Storygraph app, and I have to say I feel we made a really good choice with this debut novel from Katherine Faulkner. We live some distance apart, but both love similar types of books but wanted something which would give us sufficient material to discuss. Well, we weren't disappointed! 

The story starts with a letter penned by someone incarcerated in HMP Bowood, writing to the main character in the book, Helen. Therein lay the first clue, one which sadly went straight over my head as I was too busy settling in with thoughts of the bigger picture. The story is told predominantly from Helen's point of view with occasional insights from the other main players. The chapters are a kind of countdown of the final weeks of Helen's pregnancy, one which she is extremely anxious about as her previous experiences haven't ended well. She's nervously excited to be attending NCT antenatal classes with her husband and her brother Rory and sister-in-law Serena who are expecting their first child not long afterwards. But none of the others show up, leaving socially anxious Helen feeling rather awkward among the other couples. Until single mum to be Rachel bursts into the venue late, loud and inappropriately toting a bottle of wine as refreshment. 

From this point on the author very cleverly leads the tale down several dark alleys with dead ends, makes suggestions which could very well be truthful but could equally be total fabrication, and plants seeds of doubt about just about every character and situation. Who is Rachel? Where has she come from? Why has she homed in on Helen as her new best friend? Is it just Helen's imagination or does she seem over familiar with some of Daniel and Rory's business associates? For someone Helen has never met before, how does Rachel manage to conveniently bump into her so often? These are just some of the questions which you will have buzzing around in your head along the way.

I'm not going to hint at when the big reveals come in this book but suffice to say that there are clues throughout the entirety of the book, so if you should find it a little slow in some places then I encourage you to stick with it as you won't be disappointed when the pace picks up in other parts. 

As a debut novel I am extremely impressed by the quality of both the pacing and plotting within this story and have added Katherine Faulkner to my radar of future reading requirements.

About the Author:

Katherine is a London-based author and journalist. She studied History at Cambridge University, graduating with a First, then completed a Postgraduate Diploma in Newspaper Journalism. Since then she has been working as an investigative reporter and latterly an editor. Her work has been published in many national papers, and she most recently worked at The Times, where she was the joint Head of News.

While working as an undercover reporter, Katherine won the Cudlipp Award for public interest journalism and was nominated for a string of others. She was also commended by a committee of MPs for 'the highest standards of ethical investigative reporting.'

Katherine was inspired to write her debut novel about the complexity of female friendships after attending NCT classes when pregnant, and her experience of sudden intimacy with complete strangers.

She lives in Hackney, East London, where she grew up, with her husband and two daughters.