Nothing Else By Louise Beech

‘Nothing Else’ is the latest book by Louise Beech.

Heather Harris is a piano teacher and professional musician, whose quiet life revolves around music, whose memories centre on a single song that haunts her. A song she longs to perform again. A song she wrote as a child, to drown out the violence in their home. A song she played with her little sister, Harriet. But Harriet is gone … she disappeared when their parents died, and Heather never saw her again. When Heather is offered an opportunity to play piano on a cruise ship, she leaps at the chance. She’ll read her recently released childhood care records by day – searching for clues to her sister’s disappearance – and play piano by night … coming to terms with the truth about a past she’s done everything to forget.

Hands up if you like thrillers set at sea, as ‘Nothing Else’ is a turbulent one.

Seen from the narrative of Heather, with a rocky childhood she often wondered what happened to her little sister Harriet, after they were cruelly ripped apart. Now with an exciting new job at sea, Heather is determined to piece together her childhood and find her missing sister.

From the offset this book is a creepy and intense story, filled with flashbacks of an unhappy childhood with abusive parents tackling substance abuse and two sisters just hoping to get through each day and a mutual love of playing the piano gives them a strong bond.

Louise’s writing is wonderfully vivid with beautiful descriptions of the cruise ship as well as the accompanying soundtrack throughout the story. Heather is a fascinating character haunted by her past and guilted by not protecting her little sister and the song that Heather wrote for her little sister is particularly sad.

The flashbacks really set the scene and tone of the story superbly and really gripped me from the start.

Atmospheric and unsettling, ‘Nothing Else’ is a emotional and poignant story about the strength of a sister’s bond and the determination to reconnect.

You can buy ‘Nothing Else’ from Amazon and is available to buy from good bookshops.