Review – Daisy Darker

From Goodreads:

After years of avoiding each other, Daisy Darker’s entire family is assembling for Nana’s 80th birthday party in Nana’s crumbling gothic house on a tiny tidal island. Finally back together one last time, when the tide comes in, they will be cut off from the rest of the world for eight hours.

The family arrives, each of them harboring secrets. Then at the stroke of midnight, as a storm rages, Nana is found dead. And an hour later, the next family member follows…

Trapped on an island where someone is killing them one by one, the Darkers must reckon with their present mystery as well as their past secrets, before the tide comes in and all is revealed.

With a wicked wink to Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None, Daisy Darker’s unforgettable twists will leave readers reeling.

This started amazing and then kind of petered out which was slightly disappointing. I loved the set up and was waiting for a fantastic twist on Agatha Christie’s ‘And Then There Were None’ but it ended up just being an almost direct retelling. This made it disappointing overall as The story beats were the same so I knew who the culprit was far beyond the reveal just by my knowledge of Agatha Christie.

the other reveals were also somewhat predictable, I had figured out what the big twist was also pretty soon after the initial set up so it all just seemed a little dull and going through the motions at that point. This was a real shame as for the first 10-15% of the book I was hooked the writing was flowery but used in a fantastic way, and that initial build up to the first murder was just fantastic and really kept you on your toes. I think because of how knock out this first portion was it just made my disappointment at the last half of the book all the more.

I just really hoped that this would have been more, have been braver in its twists and done something really out of the box but instead it kind of played into the predictable tropes. However, this hasn’t put me off Alice Feeney. I have heard amazing things about some of her other books and because I enjoyed her writing style so much I am eager to try them.