An excellent read which held my interest throughout with good well described characters that I soon got involved with.

I can definitely recommend this book and thank you to Netgalley and Penguin Michael Joseph books for giving me the opportunity to read this book.

I literally could not put this book down, and found myself holding my breath at certain moments. Ellie and Steven were both compelling characters and one of the things I loved most about Nobody But Us was the way in which I got to understand how they had come to this dark place and what motivated their actions. It was such a compelling read. And the atmosphere and sense of danger was ratcheted up by the setting – an ostensibly beautiful cabin in the remote wilderness, surrounded by trees, in the deepest of snowy winters – it totally heightened the almost-cinematic sense of jeopardy throughout. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

A great and really twisty thriller!
Loved this one. Very atmospheric and recommended to all thriller readers.

Intense, twisted, claustrophobic and - yes - quite messed up! - Laure’s debut novel is deliciously dark and oh so satisfying. Sequestered together in an ultra modern cabin in the woods, Steven and Ellie are a host of secrets and mystery. I kept turning the page, thrown totally off kilter by Laure’s deft and beautiful writing. A very modern psychological thriller and one to preorder for 2022!

There was a lot I did like about this. I liked the tension, the various perspectives and point of view.
This is a very important subject matter and its tackled in an interesting way.
However, the dynamic of the couple is predictable and stereotypical and I feel like other books tackled it better.

This is an intriguing idea for a thriller; a couple leave New York to go to a remote house for some romantic time together. However, the book opens a few days later with the police finding the house covered in blood and ransacked. Clearly, something violent and disturbing has happened within the walls of the modern holiday home...but what? This fills in the missing gaps of that story.

And it is quite a story.

The narrative is told from different perspectives. Firstly, there is Ellie Masterson, the young woman of the couple seeking a snowy getaway with her lover. Her older partner, Steven, is the second voice, while a third unnamed narrator contributes fragments of a story whose significance is revealed as the novel goes on. We see the couple travel together to the house and settle in, enjoying the snowy woods and the ocean behind the house.

There are hints that things aren't quite right from the start - Steven is getting secret texts, Ellie watches him flirt with a young woman at the service station, Ellie seems strangely on edge...but they're on a romantic break so what can possibly go wrong? A lot, it turns out.

I can't go into the details of the plot wthout giving spoilers that would take the impact out of the twists and turns for anyone who hasn't read this yet. Suffice it to say, I was hooked and wondering where it would go next. Any reservations I had about a whole book with such a tiny cast of characters was assuaged quickly and I settled in for the rollercoaster ride.

One thing must be said: it isn't an easy read. In the wake of #MeToo and the increased (and timely) focus on gaslighting and domestic violence, this is a horrific tale, although maybe not in the way a reader might initially suspect. The violence is quite graphic and Ellie and Steven are both incredibly unsympathetic - despite the way that their narrated sections attempt to justify their actions. I hoped that this would have a feminist twist but the resolution - while clever, satisfying and well-plotted - didn't quite deliver that punch for me.

For fans of psychological or domestic thrillers, there is much to get your teeth into here. It will definitely keep you guessing up until the end and is one to look out for in 2022.

Thanks to NetGalley and Penguin for my copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.

A fantastic story that was so gripping, I couldn't put this down as couldn't decide who was the real deal! What a huge amount of twists and turns in one book!

This was certainly a roller coaster of a thriller. It hooked me in for the first half and then I began to think that it would never end. It was not an easy read in any way, but it certainly made me want to pick it up again and again.
It is not for the faint hearted.
I did feel that the violence was a bit over the top.
A road trip with a vengeance.

Laure Van Rensburg's tight, smart, and gut-wrenching debut kept me turning pages desperately to figure out who was the lone survivor - Ellie or Stephen - from the bloodbath which police encounter in a remote getaway retreat on page one. It's a brilliant framing device, allowing character traits which might otherwise cloy in the first few chapters - Ellie's meekness and compliance, Stephen's arrogance and smarm - to become flashing danger signs on the way to a truly dramatic reveal and a dark, taut spinning-out of the consequences. This reads like Gone Girl meets My Dark Vanessa, but Van Rensburg truly excels at the sentence level: the writing manages to be simultaneously both precise and lush, literary, and beautiful. Her author's note, centring the work in the #MeToo movement and her own experiences of trauma, is a wonderful postscript and a reminder why these stories matter. Bravo!

I love psychological thrillers, and have high standards. This one more than lived up to the hype! Straight away, I was gripped by Ellie and Steven’s story. Tight, tense and terrifying in parts, it was difficult to put down. This dark and twisty (and very timely) tale is one to watch in 2022!

A debut novel that is a fantastic psychological thriller. Paced perfectly and a brilliantly tied up ending.

Laure Van Rensburg is definitely one to watch

This revenge thriller was quite clever in the way Ellie and Steven's relationship was not all that it seemed. The time in the cabin seemed to go on for ages, However, the ending was great, and picked up on all of the little things that had happened previously, and why they were important.

This is a debut novel by Laure Van Rensburg. On reading the first 30 pages, I thought, this is a romance but I was wrong! The writing is sharp with a well paced plot. I read it in one sitting well into the early hours of the morning. For me, the characters are unlikeable, I was shouting at the book! Is that a good or bad sign?

I give a 3 star rating. I would recommend the book.


I WANT TO THANK NETGALLEY FOR THE OPPORTUNITY OF READING AN ADVANCED COPY OF THIS BOOK FOR AN HONEST REVIEW. MY OPINIONS ARE MY OWN.

I really wish people wouldn't go on roadtrips with people in novels. They never end well do they? This one involves a professor and a student who go from New York to a remote cabin for a bit of time together. Well, it does not go well. But does it go very badly in the way you expect?

I’d like to thank NetGalley and Michael Joseph for approving me for an ARC of this debut.

I love a good thriller and when I started reading this one I soon felt those Gone Girl vibes and knew I was in for a treat. We meet Steven and Ellie as they embark on a romantic weekend away. From the alternating chapters it is clear that not all is as it seems and the author does not hang about in getting the action going. By 35% so much had happened that I didn’t dare turn my gaze away from the page!

I soon found myself in the thick of Ellie and Steven’s worst nightmare and there were moments when I held my breathe, unsure what would happen next. I liked how the story unravelled and although there were moments when the action ebbed I still enjoyed the read.

The subject matter of this book is very important and it’s going to be hard to review this without spoiling it for others, so please excuse the lack of information from me. What I will say is I found it interesting hearing both male and female POV on the subject and the author’s notes at the end gave clarity to why she wrote it.

Fast paced and gripping, this is a psychological thriller to get your heart racing! A couple keeping secrets and isolated in a creepy house, what more could you ask for? I wish I could tell you more but if you want the answers then add this to your tbr pile!

A very clever psychological thriller which I enjoyed. The twists and turns are great.

Thanks for letting me review this book

A brilliant character driven read that's hard to put down. A must read for thriller fans and a fantastic debut from Laure Van Rensburg.
4 stars.

It had the promise of a blockbuster but delivered a straight to dvd disappointment. The story of a couple going away for the weekend which escalates to a crime scene is the promising premise of this book. The writing is enticing and the story pleasant enough but the story becomes quite predictable and is really let down by a patronising end.

Huge thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for letting me read this ARC.

The premise of this book had me hooked - a couple head for a romantic getaway in an isolated cabin? Yes please.

I really loved the atmospheric cabin setting - it made it all the more creepy to read. I enjoyed that it had a remote location which I think worked really well with the style of the book. I do get easily freaked out by this genre so I enjoyed that element of the book.

However, I just couldn’t really get behind either character. I found it difficult to connect with them and struggled to empathise with Ellie and her revenge story didn’t really resonate with me.

This book gave me Rock Paper Scissors vibes so if you enjoyed that one, you’ll like this one too!

Twisty and incredibly tense throughout, I really enjoyed this unusual thriller. The entire book was so intensely claustrophobic – I found it incredibly skilled in terms of the relationship between the two central characters that developed and was ultimately turned in its head. I also very much enjoyed the cabin setting.