From start to finish, I thoroughly enjoyed this book.
I didn't need any lead in time to the book, I was immersed instantly. Daisy was an extremely likeable protagonist who was brought up in a very dysfunctional family. Her grandparent being her strongest advocate.
I was surprised and had a little gasp to myself, with the cogs whirring in my brain, when the twist was revealed. Superb moment in the story.
This was my first book by this author but it won't be the last. I would definitely buy this book for friends and family as a gift., and I will be recommending it at every opportunity.

I saw this one advertised and really wanted to read it but I didn’t get on so well with Alice Feeney’s Rock, Paper, Scissors so was a little unsure going in.

We start off with an impactful letter to the reader which isn’t clear if it’s a real letter or part of the story. Then we meet with Daisy and her compelling story.

Although slow at the beginning, I was unsure if I wanted to continue. After a discussion with a friend who was reading it at the same time, (which was awesome by the way!) I carried on by her recommendation and by around 20% it picked up considerably and became much more enjoyable. From there it was excitement after excitement.

The story is devastatingly sad, especially when all is revealed, the characters are varied and dramatic but each a perfect fit. The theories I had were crazy and I had accused almost every one of the characters at some point. I was totally gripped from that 20% mark onwards.

This is one of the most cleverly written thrillers I have ever read, it was truly fantastic. I thought I had it all sewn up in my head and then doubted myself so many times, switching between who I thought was responsible and what I thought was going to happen like a yoyo. In the end, my first theory was correct, funnily enough, the same that my friend thought, and all became so much clearer. The ups and downs are brilliant but it’s a book that makes you think hard, to work it all out but it’s all-consuming.

This is a brilliant five-star read that I would highly recommend!

The Darker family are reuniting for Daisy's grandmother's 80th birthday. The party is taking place at her house on a private island and once the tide comes in they will be cut off from the mainland. The perfect time for a killer to strike.

I am a big fan of books that take inspiration from And Then There Were None. I raced through the book wanting to know who would be the next victim. I enjoyed the flashbacks to Daisy's childhood with her siblings and their close family friend. Unfortunately I was not a fan of the ending of this book. It felt a little out of place to the rest of book.

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.

This is a twisted mystery read.
Wonderful well written plot and story line that had me engaged from the start.
Love the well fleshed out characters and found them believable.
Great suspense and found myself second guessing every thought I had continuously.
Can't wait to read what the author brings out next.
Recommend reading.

I was provided an ARC from NetGalley and the publisher. This is my own honest voluntary review.

I got swept up in this book from the first page. It is by far my favourite of Alice Feeney's books.

I loved that the characters were all so awful so that I almost looked forward to their death. It gave the whole book a sense of anticipation which kept me turning pages when I should have been doing real life things.

I would say that I thought the main twist was obvious from very early on and I suspected two of the twists which ended up being confirmed. Yet this didn't massively impact my enjoyment overall.

I thought there were elements that were a bit too repetitive, but again, this was enough for me not to rate 5 stars but I still thoroughly enjoyed it.

Daisy Darker, youngest daughter of the Darker family, arrives at Seaglass - her grandmother's house sited on its own small island off the Cornish coast. It is Nana's 80th birthday & the whole family arrive one by one, father Frank, mother Nancy, & Daisy's two siblings Rose & Lily, along with Lily's teenage daughter, Trixie. An unexpected visitor also arrives, their childhood friend, Conor, who was looked after by Nana when his father mistreated him. The stage is set, the players are all assembled, & the tide moves in cutting off any retreat to the mainland for hours. The family are unaware that this is going to be the very last birthday celebration for most of them, until they begin to die one every hour.

This is an excellent read with a nod to Agatha Christie's 'And Then There Were None'. I found it a bit difficult to get into for the first 20%, but when the murders start to happen things pick up considerably. I ended up flying through the last 70% of the book in one day, I couldn't put it down for long. The family were an interesting group of characters, each one of them guilty of something, whether it was abandoning their family (Frank), or jealousy of an older sibling (Lily). The nicest character was Poppins the dog, a sweet Old English sheepdog (thankfully the dog is absolutely fine throughout the book if anyone was worried).

I had begun to work out some of what was happening but that final twist was great. It turns everything you've read on its head. The creepy poems were also a nice touch. I recommend this to anyone who like dark thrillers, especially 'locked room' scenarios, & the only reason I didn't award it full marks was the for the first 20% where I struggled. 4.5 stars (rounded up)

My thanks to NetGalley & publishers, Pan Macmillan, for the opportunity to read an ARC.

Following both past and present narratives, Daisy Darker follows Daisy as she heads back to the only place she has ever called home, her Nana's house Seaglass. Set on a small island regularly cut off by the tide, it instantly gives an unsettling vibe as there are several points where no can get on or off the island.

The family are coming together to celebrate Nana's 80th birthday, which is especially poignant after a prediction made years ago that she wouldn't live past this age and she sees it as the perfect opportunity to tie up some loose ends!
And what a dysfunctional family they are! All very different and with their own reasons for coming back, but also all having their own secrets and reasons to dislike each other. So when the strange events start happening, any one of them could have been responsible.

This was a slow burn to start, setting the atmospheric scene well at the family home. With a cast of characters that were difficult to warm to making me think twice every time I thought I knew who was responsible. The story builds up to a very unexpected conclusion, to me anyway! I thought I had worked it out, but did not see that coming at all!

A very clever homage to then there were none by Agatha Christie! So clever that when I finished I felt like I needed to re-read immediately to find all the breadcrumbs!
Alice feeney doesn’t disappoint.
Full review to follow on my insta blog (the.readinglife)

Huge thanks to Netgalley and Pan Macmillan for the gifted digital copy in exchange for my honest review. All opinions are my own.

Read this if you:

✔ Are looking for a thriller with a big twist

✔ Enjoy character built and alternating timelines

✔ Want a book that is suspenseful from start to finish

✔ Like a thriller with a lot of characters where everyone becomes a suspect

This book was very suspenseful from start to finish. The action takes place in one house where the main characters are stuck for a few hours and this made the book feel very claustrophobic. Dead bodies begin to appear one by one and the characters as well as the reader start questioning everyone.

I really enjoyed the alternating timeliness and how well the characters were built. My only problem with the book is that there weren’t any major twists throughout the story which made the character built part seemed a bit slow for a thriller.

However, the big twist at the end was great in my opinion. Some readers say that they clearly saw it coming and, if I analyze everything now from a new perspective, I can see some clues. But while I was reading, the big twist took me by surprise and I really liked it.

Overall, this is a great psychological thriller especially for people new to this genre. If you devour thriller on a regular basis, though, you might be a bit bored with this one. While I did enjoy this book, I can say that I liked Rock Paper Scissors better.

Daisy Darker is a tense, thrilling mystery novel.

It's set in both the past and present, with the past told through flashbacks and the present set over the course of one highly eventful weekend.

This is an evocative and descriptive novel, yet this doesn't disrupt the story's pacing. In fact, it's expertly written. Alice Feeney successfully juxtaposes slow, creeping tension against sudden drama, all overlaid with a film of nostalgia.

The setting of the family home is gloriously vivid. It's easy to imagine the sprawling house on the tiny tidal island, faded Gothic splendour gradually crumbling away into the waiting sea. The nature of the tidal island also adds a new variation to the classic locked room mystery. If no one can get on or off the island, does that mean the killer is walking among the family?

The Darker family are fascinating to read about. They're all very different people, yet all are drawn back to the family home for one last time. This is a weekend where long-buried secrets will be uncovered and rifts in the family will open up once again. One thing's for sure - the Darker family will never be the same again.

If you give this book a go, be prepared for a twisty read that hooks you from the very start. It's full of surprises, unexpected discoveries, and gradual reveals, all leading up to one final shock at the end. Be warned, you won't want to put the book down!

Absolutely brilliantly gripping thriller. Something a little different mixing murder, intrigue and supernatural vibes kept me hooked throughout. One of my favourite reads of 2022 so far proving the author to be top of the game. Definitely looking forward to more from this author. Highly recommend. Loved it!

Daisy Darker is an outstanding locked-room mystery that even gives Agatha Christie a run for her money. Daisy's nana is the matriarch of the Darker family and her 80th Birthday has the entire family coming to her house on a private island. She predicted years ago that she wouldn't live past the age of 80, so even the estranged family members show up hoping to cement their inheritance. But then the bodies start piling up. Who is the killer and why are they killing their family members? Highly recommended! Be sure to check out Daisy Darker today.

Chillingly atmospheric and riveting thriller, with a trademark Feeney twist that you WILL NOT guess!

I am a huge fan of Alice Feeney’s novels and have loved all of her previous novels. So I don’t say this lightly: this might just be her best yet! Steeped in atmosphere, heart-racing tension, toxic relationships and twists that would make a corkscrew look perpendicular, this is a masterpiece of mystery fiction. Feeney lovingly references and pays homage to Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None and I can see Daisy Darker becoming equally as iconic in its author’s body of work. Daisy Darker transcends genres in a way that I cannot elaborate on for fear of spoiling this book for others, but I can say that I defy anyone who claims that they worked out the entirety of the conclusion. Feeney is recognised as one of contemporary fictions queens of the twist, but I can honestly say that the final revelations of this book are completely mind-blowing. This is a defining moment in Feeney’s career and readers will never forget Daisy Darker.

I loved the swathe of emotions I felt reading this book. The narrative evokes a cacophony of feelings: it’s simultaneously chilling, exciting, tense, witty, dark, lyrical, beautiful and heartbreaking. It’s a family saga wrapped in toxicity, lies and tragedy. The cast of characters are exceptionally drawn, leaping to life off the page. Feeney expertly makes all of the characters suspicious and easy to detest on some level, but the power of her writing means that you also sympathise and genuinely feel for them all as they start being picked off. The poetry about each member of the family that is laced throughout the novel, is both beautiful and ruinous. It offers a glimpse of the characters outside of the current situation and helps paint the picture of each of them. I absolutely loved this style, which complemented Feeney’s already lyrical and elegant prose perfectly.

Another aspect of Feeney’s novels that make me keep returning, is her ability to create razor sharp atmosphere through location in particular. The tidal island that Seaglass sits on is the perfect setting for a locked room murder mystery, but Feeney does so much more with this setting. I felt every thunder clap, every spattering of rain on the window pains, every creaking floorboard and every chime from the eighty clocks in the hallway as I read. Seaglass is vividly described and becomes a significant character in its own right. Feeney uses the house to it’s full potential when creating the tension and terror at the heart of the plot and the final handful of chapters before the final reveal are simply terrifying. Home is supposed to be our sanctuary, our safe space away from evil. When evil infiltrates it, it plays on our base fears and Feeney does this with a true skill. I was on the edge of my seat for the entirety of this book, but during the last quarter I could feel my heart beating and my breath catching!

If you love a thriller that plays with the genre, keeps you guessing and pays homage to the classic murder mystery tropes, Daisy Darker is for you. Just prepare to have your socks knocked off!

Daisy Darker’s family were as dark as dark can be, when one of them died all of them lied and pretended not to see . . .

It's approaching Nana Darker's eightieth birthday and she has invited the whole family to join her at Seaglass, her crumbling seaside house in Cornwall where, once the tide comes in, they are cut off from civilisation for the next eight hours. The family haven't all been together like this for quite a few years, Nana isn't getting any younger and thinks this may be the last birthday she gets to spend with all her family, but nobody is prepared for the events that followed on this Halloween night...

Daisy Darker is told from the perspective of Daisy, the youngest of the Darker sisters, and across a timeline of the hours that they spend at Seaglass in the lead up to Nana's eightieth birthday, but also delving into the past with memories of certain events of their childhood days. They're a dysfunctional family to say the least, Darker by name and even Darker by nature. This is a tale of family secrets and plenty of them, nobody seems to really like each other in the family and I could see why, I didn't really warm to any of the characters either! The story started off quite slow and didn't really ramp up till about half way through, I was second guessing throughout, so when that twist came I was not prepared at all, and the revelation of the perpetrator was another surprise. I loved the short chapters and the way the author built up the tension as she always does. I still think His & Hers is my favourite by Feeney but I'd definitely recommend this one.

I'd like to thank Pan Macmillan and Netgalley for the approval, I will post my review on Amazon and Goodreads.

This is a deliciously plotted thriller which will keep you guessing until the end. The Darker family are an unpleasant group of individuals, who possibly all deserve their untimely ends. The family are gathered together by their gran for one final birthday celebration before her much-anticipated death. As a dysfunctional family gather and become tormented by an unseen murderer, Feeney unravels a dark, deeply destructive past which has to be read to be believed!

Some of the murders are totally outrageous as various members of the family are killed - but so carefully is this story spun, it is almost all completely believable. Lots to shock and disturb in this story: murder, suicide, infidelity, abuse...set against the most glorious backdrop of a Cornish house called Seaglass which is remote and isolated due to tidal activity.

I really liked the character development and the individual reveals of fatal flaws and past misdemeanors. Trust me when I say that no-one is to be trusted in this novel!

This was such an enjoyable thriller. Loved the setting and the tension in this claustrophobic and compelling read! The Darker family has some quite nasty characters , not many likeable people between them!
A dysfunctional family who haven't been together for years. The weekend brings them back together and stirs up some memories of their childhood.

Jealousy. Secrets and lies.

Nana also has an announcement to make ... and not long after, when the clocks strike midnight , somebody screams ... and a body is found!
We don't know who to blame , they all have dark secrets to keep and there's not much love lost between them..

Alice Feeney writes a clever thriller, full of suspense and said herself that this book gives a nod to Agatha Christie.

Love her writing style. Loved the rhyming poems , which do repeat but I think you spot more when you read again and again.

Thanks to netgalley and panmacmillan for the arc copy of this book

I really enjoyed this book! I thought the pace of it was excellent. I liked dipping into the past and finding out the family history while the story progressed in the present day. I thought it had a really good ending and as soon as it finished I wanted to start it from the beginning again and see what I hadn’t picked up on. Loved it, definitely recommend it, thank you #netgalley

I've never read any books by Alice Feeney before but the gorgeous cover caught my eye, as well as the mention that the story has a deliberate nod towards a certain Agatha Christie classic!

After years of avoiding each other, Daisy Darker’s entire family is assembling for her Nana’s 80th birthday party in Nana’s crumbling gothic house on a tiny tidal island. 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 harbouring 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 goes out at dawn and all is revealed.

I loved the deliciously spooky setting: a gothic house, perched on a rocky outcrop during a thunderstorm. The character of Nana, with her twisted fairy tale rhymes and collection of clocks, was fabulous. The little pictures of the waves growing larger at the beginning of each chapter, as the tension racked up, were a great finishing touch and the cover is utterly gorgeous. The story is beautifully written and terrifically clever in the way everything is wrapped up at the end. The only thing that stopped it being a five-star read for me was that the final twist is a trope I hate (sorry!), and it reminded me of another classic story that I won't mention because of spoilers! If you don't spot that reference in advance, you will be stunned.

Daisy Darker would appeal to anyone who loves 'locked room' style mysteries, dysfunctional families, gothic settings, and authors such as Agatha Christie, Lucy Foley and Riley Sager.


Thank you to Alice Feeney and Pan MacMillan for my copy of this book, which I requested via NetGalley and reviewed voluntarily.

Have loved all previous Alice Feeney novels but this one absolutely did not do it for me! It started ok, a good atmospheric thriller with echoes of Agatha Christie’s And Then There Was One, the middle dragged and was extremely repetitive, the ending was plain ludicrous.

Daisy Darker was a great read. I loved the setting and this dysfunctional family gathering. There were so many twists and turns I just did not know what to think or who to suspect. It kept me hooked all the way through and it was a complete page turner.

Thank you to NetGalley and Pan Macmillan for my ARC.