About the Book

PLAY
Andrew, the manager of Shanamore Holiday Cottages, watches his only guest via a hidden camera in her room. One night the unthinkable happens: a shadowy figure emerges onscreen, kills her and destroys the camera. But who is the murderer? How did they know about the camera? And how will Andrew live with himself?

PAUSE
Natalie wishes she’d stayed at home as soon as she arrives in the wintry isolation of Shanamore. There’s something creepy about the manager. She wants to leave, but she can’t – not until she’s found what she’s looking for…

REWIND
This is an explosive story about a murder caught on camera. You’ve already missed the start. To get the full picture you must rewind the tape and play it through to the end, no matter how shocking…

 

My Thoughts

I’m a huge fan of Catherine Ryan Howard, and particularly loved her previous novel The Liar’s Girl, and can happily say that Rewind is her best yet! The premise of Rewind is brilliant and the book absolutely delivers!

Rewind has a really interesting set up with each chapter being Pause, Rewind, Fast Forward or Stop and this is brilliant because it really helps you know where you are in a story that jumps around a little, as well as making for more intrigue.

Andrew manages Shanamore Holiday Cottages and has a creepy obsession with watching his female guests through a hidden camera in their bedroom. This was so unnerving to me and has made me never want to stay in an Air BnB ever again!

Natalie is a young married woman who has a level of fame and is well-known on social media. One day she disappears and no one has any idea where she might have gone.

Audrey is a young reporter who is desperate for a proper story to work on so that she can make her name as a journalist. She gets a chance to write a brief piece on Natalie and this leads to her being pulled into find where she is and what has happened to her.

I loved this book! It has such a terrifying opening and from that moment on I didn’t put the book down once and read it all in one sitting! All the characters are so believable and I was so scared about Audrey ending up at Shanamore Cottages and what might happened to her. I was also really intrigued by what could have happened to Natalie – as we delve further into her story it becomes apparent, as is so often the case, that her social media doesn’t show the whole truth about her life and perhaps she wasn’t as happy as she appeared to be. I went back and forth on what could have happened to her and if Shanamore Cottage played it’s part or if there was more to the story with her husband.

The way the book the moves back and forward in time really adds to the building suspense throughout as whilst you know where you are in time, you get so engrossed in the story that you can’t quite piece together who was where and when. You have to know the past in order to understand the present, and as you fast forward to the future you being to see how the previous section slots in. The moments when you pause really do lead to head spinning moments that make you question everything you read up to this point. It’s so good and so well-written!

This is such a brilliant novel for the modern age looking at the negative side of social media and the way readily available cameras make it so easy for voyeurs and obsessives to track their victims. This book is disturbing, thrilling and impossible to put down. I highly recommend it!

Many thanks to Corvus for my copy of this book. All thoughts are my own.

Rewind is out now and available here.