In Her Blood (Nikki Crutchley, HarperCollins)

It’s been a long time since Jac Morgan was in her New Zealand hometown of Everly. She needed to be far away from her past and all the rumours about her involvement in the housefire that killed her mother. Now, though, Jac’s younger sister Charlie is missing, and nobody in town cares enough about the Morgans to do anything about it. As Jac finds a job cleaning up Everly’s slowly decaying Hotel Gilmore—the site of another disappearance decades earlier—she begins to suspect there’s more to the building’s history than anyone is willing to admit. From Jac’s hunt for her sister and Charlie’s increasing horror as she sits trapped by an unknown assailant, to the tale of unloved daughter and hotel heir Lisa Gilmore 21 years earlier, this story weaves past and present with unknown places, becoming more unsettling with every page. The halls, rooms and secret doors of Hotel Gilmore are thick with dust and years of grim history, which makes for a disquieting setting. Jac is a flawed character—she expects nothing from anybody, including herself, and gets exactly that—but she is determined to find the sister whose disappearance everyone is dismissing. In Her Blood is a chilling slow burn, sure to grip fans of psychological thrillers by Paula Hawkins and Rose Carlyle.

Fiona Hardy is a children’s author and a bookseller at Readings.

Category: Reviews