JP Pomare

so this was slow as heck... it took way to long to get exciting/grab my interest. too much plot that wasn't moving the story along and i was getting bored! wanted to put it down a handful of times. nothing is very clear throughout the book, especially at the beginning. it was all very vague and i had so many questions! i usually like unknown factors, but i was very annoyed by how little was revealed in each chapter and how painfully slow it took to get to the climax of the story. and when things did finally happen i felt like it was weird. it didn’t make a ton of sense for me and there were also secondary characters that seemed to serve no purpose in the story in the end. the story was too messy and clunky for me and left me going, what the heck, but not in a good way. i do have a positive note! one thing i liked about this book was the concept of memory and how it can be manipulated and changed throughout time. this just wasn't for me! but i do see many positive reviews on this book and i do understand why.. but in the end it was just too slow for me to keep me interested… (més)

I came to 'Home Before Night' with high expectations after having read 'Tell Me Lies' which opened with a woman pushing a man in front of a train on the Melbourne Metro and then spent the rest of the novel on what generated the anger and hate behind that push. It was a story riddled with lies and deceptions, soaked in threat and guilt and it kept me on the edge of my seat.

'Home Before Night' starts with a new mother leaving her baby with her husband on the beach to cool off in the calm shallows. Then she gets caught in an undertow and the father has to decide whether to stay with the baby or rescue his wife. The action is vivid and intense. And that's only the prologue.

The action rolls forward nearly two decades and we're watching a divorced single mother worrying because her teenage son hasn't returned home before curfew on the first night of the new lockdown.

The atmosphere was filled with anxiety. There was a strong sense that something was wrong but I didn't know what. I didn't know enough about the mother to assess her reactions or enough about the son to guess what he was up to but there was more going on than just a missed curfew.

As the story went on there are hints about crimes and cover-ups in the parents' past. There are doubts about the son's new girlfriend and her cultish family. There are doubts about just about everyone and everything and by the time I was halfway through I knew that lockdown was the least important part of the tale and that guilt, lies and betrayals were driving the increasingly dark plot which was clearly headed towards a violent confrontation.

Even though I was looking for misdirection and I knew I didn't really know what was going on, the twist, when it came, caught me completely by surprise and was different and worse than I'd expected.

I listened to 'Home Before Night' on a long, but not-quite-long-enough, car ride. I was so wrapped up in the story that I had immediately to sit down for another ninety minutes to find out how the story ended.

So, 'Home Before Night' had a strong, engaging plot with clever misdirection and a surprising premise which hooked my curiosity and held it to the end. There were points in the book where it seemed to me that the pacing was off. These were mostly moments of introspection when the mother or the son were going through the options of what could be going on and what they should be doing next. These moments went on a little too long and felt a little clunky. Perhaps it was because the introspection was being used for plot exposition rather than character development that made the text drag a little.

Even so, the book was fun and I'll be back for more. I have J. P. Pomare's latest book, 'Trapdoor' (2023) and 'In The Clearing' (2019) in my TBR pile.… (més)

This one had me on the edge of my seat a lot of the time. It's riddled with lies and deceptions and soaked in threat and guilt. It opens with a woman pushing a man in front of a train on the Melbourne Metro, then most of the rest of the novel is about how the anger and hate behind that push was generated. It's not a linear path and it's filled with surprises.

On the whole, I found the plot elaborate but just about believable, if you take into account that events are driven by an obsessive, detailed-oriented, sociopathic narcissist.

The psychologist herself was a little harder to take. Every time she took what was obviously the wrong decision, I wanted to shout at her: "You're a practising clinical psychologist. Have you no insight into yourself?". Her teenage son showed a lot more good sense than his mother did most of the time.

By the end of the novel, I understood that, although the plot was driven by the evil manipulations of a narcissist, the success of the plot depended on the inability of the psychologist to control her risk-taking urges.

This was a solid, memorable story, with one of my favourite villains and least favourite heroines of recent time.

I recommend the audiobook version. Aimee Horne's narration is perfect. If you're an Audible member, this book is included in your membership.… (més)