Wow! The Coffin Club is a fantastic psychological thriller. Rightly so there’s been a big buzz about this book but actually in my opinion it deserves even more of a buzz. I raced through it and was on tenterhooks throughout. This is domestic noir at its best that would also make an edge of your seat serial drama. You know the type, one in which everyone is talking about it and where we all have a view on the characters.
The Coffin Club is Jacqueline Sutherland’s debut novel and within the narrative she does something that is brilliant but hard to explain. However I’m going to try and have a bash at explaining. The Coffin Club can be described as a slow burner, but right from the get go there is a feeling of menacing unease that builds and builds in dramatic and chilling intensity. Although full of twists, the plot is well thought out, tight and in a sense, very simple. So much so that I could imagine this story happening in real life, which as you can guess, disturbed me. It is also a fantastic character driven novel.
The Coffin Club is the story of Kat, a wealthy widow scarred emotionally and physically after being involved in a car accident that killed her husband. Trying to escape her grief and trauma by moving to the countryside, Kat struggles to escape the crushing grief she feels by the loss at her last chance of motherhood. Hence she is on the brink of taking her own life. Yet fate intervenes and she meets Ginny, who reminds her of ‘Charlie Dimmock from the TV, garden-lovely, capable and strong.’ Ginny soon becomes the only friend Kat has ever had.
Encouraged by Ginny, Kat joins a young and widowed social group where she meets Nico, a handsome Spanish widower who helps her move ‘away from hurt and regret and towards something that felt like hope.’ As well as being caring and eager to build a new life in England, Nico also has a dry sense of humour that Kat likes, dubbing the young widowed group the ‘Coffin Club‘. However what really attracts Kat to Nico is that he is the loving father to five-year-old Magdalena.
Could Nico give Kat the one thing she has always wanted, the chance to be a mother?
As I mentioned before, The Coffin Club is full of twists. I did have my suspicions about some aspects of the plot and I eventually discovered some of my suspicions to be right. However as the plot developed and I never knew quite who or what to trust, I feel that this was the author’s intension throughout. There’s no doubt about it, Jacqueline Sutherland has created a brilliantly crafted and unsettling psychological thriller.
I also have to say that I love the cover of this book. It is simple, eye catching and unsettling. It is also the perfect cover for this novel.
If you love to be gripped by a book then I urge you to read The Coffin Club. You won’t be disappointed. It was released in hardback on 7 April, so you can easily grab and devour a copy now.
Thank you to Anne Cater from Random Things Tours for inviting me to the blog tour of this stunning and thought provoking psychological thriller. Thank you also to Point Blank for my gifted copy of The Coffin Club in return for my honest review. It has been a privilege to read and review this stunning debut novel.
To read the reviews from my fellow book bloggers also on the blog tour, please see below.
Happy reading everyone! 🙂
Thanks for the blog tour support x