#TheHouseAtTheEdgeOfTheWoods #NetGalley
Breathtaking.
When Ben was seven, his mother was murdered in the woods while he waited for her in their car. The case made the front pages, but her killer was never found. Thirty years later, Ben has a safe, grown-up life: a job, a ramshackle cottage and, most importantly, a happy marriage to Rebecca. His mother has receded to the corners of his mind, lingering only in the nightmares that won't quite go away.Then Rebecca takes on a new job, painting a fairy-tale fresco for a wealthy businessman who starts asking questions about Ben's mother Is it time for the truth to come out - and for Ben to face the questions he's never dared ask before?
Thanks to NetGalley and Random House UK Cornerstone Century for giving me an advance copy.

I mostly enjoyed this.... the whirlwind romance of our main characters had me charmed from the start, and Ben was someone I could not help but to like a lot.
There was mystery aplenty... what did happen to Ben's mum, or rather , who happened.
I wasn't so sure about the multiple point of view, it went over too much of the same ground without too much new for my liking.
The unravelling of the story worked well though, and I was fully satisfied by the end.

Memory is far from immutable and people don't always realise that what they remember may not be accurate. Sometimes we rewrite memories to get past our own discomfort, or to make things look the way that that we would want them to be. At other times, we hide away from truths that are too painful to confront.

Ben has experienced childhood trauma which involved a horrific incident. His mother was murdered in the woods when he was waiting in the car, at the age of only seven, for her to return. And her killer was never caught, which means that Ben could never get the answers or the closure he needed to move on with his life.

Yet, to all intents and purposes, it looks as if he has done precisely that - happily married to Rebecca and seemingly satisfied with his safe, secure job as a plumber, and their small, isolated home.

The thing is, while people may die, the past itself rarely does. It lives on in each one of us, and its legacy lives on in our descendants.

So when Rebecca's enigmatic new employer Pieter - who has hired her to paint the ceiling with a fairy tale mural (even if he seems decidedly *not* the fairy tale type! Perhaps he's influenced by his daughter Emily?) starts asking questions about Ben's mother, things go awry quite quickly. After all, why would he want to know? Is it some form of ghoulish curiosity, or does he know something more about what really happened...?

This reminded me of a case in the UK where a woman's toddler son was left alive after she was brutally murdered on the side of the highway after her car broke down well before the era of mobile phones. That story has haunted me ever since.

The book has an intriguing premise and some thoughtful storytelling. The reader is quickly drawn in, and the writing style makes for an easy read. It gets 3.5 stars.