Cuckoo by Julia Crouch

Cuckoo is the debut novel of new author Julia Crouch and it is a fascinating tale with a dark twist at the end.

Rose has a quiet, content life, living in the countryside with her husband Gareth and their two daughters Anna and Flossie. But this happy life is disrupted when her best friend Polly phones her one day to tell her that her husband has been killed in a car accident. Rose, being the caring friend, immediately insists that Polly and her two sons come to stay with her to help them get back on their feet.

Polly was never a normal girl, always a bit of a rebel and with her successful music career behind her, she becomes a bit of a celebrity in the sleepy village and it becomes apparent that Polly is no typical grieving widow.

But the longer Polly stays with them, the more Rose begins to wonder does she really know her childhood friend at all, giving her concern that she maybe losing grip on the family that she carefully constructed. As a series of accidents occur and Rose’s perfect life begins to unravel, she realises one thing, once Polly gets in, she is very hard to get out.

Cuckoo is an extraordinarily dark read with a psychological presence throughout. I knew from the start it wasn’t going to have a happy ending with so many troubled characters in it, I knew it was bound to end in tears. I loved the intensity of the relationship between Rose and Polly, that many times I wondered if Polly was a scorned lover, set out to get revenge on Rose. Cuckoo is a deep book that definitely gets under your skin and like Polly, once you get into it, its very hard to get out.

Julia Crouch is definitely an author to look out, if you are a fan of Nicci French, then Cuckoo is the book for you.

You can buy[amazon_link id=”0755377982″ target=”_blank” ] Cuckoo on Amazon [/amazon_link] and other good bookshops.