My rating: 5 of 5 stars
“I lie to myself all the time. But I never believe me.”
----S.E. Hinton
Aoife Clifford, an Australian author, pens her debut psychological thriller, All These Perfect Strangers that traces the story of a teenager who wraps herself up in the world of deadly and strange murders in her uni life. In this book, this young teenager uncovers herself from being a suspect to a key witness to a victim, while enjoying and experimenting the high and wild road of a uni lifestyle.
Synopsis:
You don’t have to believe in ghosts for the dead to haunt you.
You don’t have to be a murderer to be guilty.
Within six months of Pen Sheppard starting university, three of her new friends are dead. Only Pen knows the reason why.
College life had seemed like a wonderland of sex, drugs and maybe even love. The perfect place to run away from your past and reinvent yourself. But Pen never can run far enough and when friendships are betrayed, her secrets are revealed. The consequences are deadly.
‘This is about three deaths. Actually more, if you go back far enough. I say deaths, but perhaps all of them were murders. It’s a grey area. Murder, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. So let’s just call them deaths and say I was involved. This story could be told a hundred different ways.’
Pen Sheppard has just began her university life away from her hometown, away from all those dark memories involving her childhood best friend Tracey, and also away from her mother's stupid and non-working and sometimes abusive boyfriends. In short, Pen will have a fresh start in a new place and if lucky, maybe with new friends. Pen is a regular girl until she opens up about her counselling sessions with Dr. Frank and this where Pen confesses that she is constantly lying and choosing to alter the truth about what happened in her past as well as in her uni life. The story sways from the past events in Pen's life to the sometimes to the future events to the present events which is the main story line of the book. In her university, Pen soon befriends a bunch of strange students, Toby, Kesh, Rachel, Leiza, Rogan, Michael and Joad. Among them, Pens becomes inseparable with Toby, Kesh, Rachel mainly, who follow the wildest lifestyle with equally wild parties, deadly drugs, alcohol and sex and for Pen she might be falling for the cute perfect guy named Rogan. And as their lives started to get wilder, so the unidentified hit man on the campus also on loose, started making innocent, naive and provocative women his targets to physical harm. Unfortunately, the physical injuries soon turned into deaths when Pen's friends started dropping dead, Pen tangles herself yet into yet another nightmare with deaths that she thought she got away from it when she began her uni life. Pen also weaves her past story in her diary where she mentions about a murder that made her the prime suspect and then a key witness who testimonies against Tracey. So will Pen get away from the murders or will she become a victim to the hands of the serial killer lurking on the campus or is she lying about killer?
Yes all throughout the book, the story will arise so many curious questions mainly due to the protagonists confession that she is lying and that she has the power to alter the truth. Sometimes Pen looks like the killer and sometimes everyone other than Pen look like the killer and sometimes someone apart from these characters look like the killer. What is the actual story behind Pen's past will claw and haunt the readers until the big revelation. I've never read anything before that left me thoroughly confused, curious and puzzled as the story developed further with the twists and the suspense.
Hence hats off to the author for concocting such a thought-provoking and highly intriguing book that has so many layers and twists to keep the readers engaged. The author's writing style is simply amazing, and somewhat exquisite and is laced with suspense. The narrative is of Pen's POV that is often confusing and at times tiring to read word by word, unfortunately this tiring and confusing voice is so addictive that it will force the readers to stick to the story to know the "whodunit". The pacing varies from being slow to medium to fast but most of the time it is stable and the readers can easily deal with the flow of the story.
The characters are quite well-developed, although the readers will only get to know Pen from inside out. Pen justifies her role as well as her striking voice will make the readers's hearts warm up to her. Pen is lying, curious, and flawed escapist who has a "bad girl" reputation from her hometown and she might not be ready to let that reputation go even in her university. Pen narrates the story through writing a diary on her counselor, Dr. Frank's suggestion, but when she meets him face-to-face, she never opens up about herself or about her stories honestly, hence she writes it all down. The rest of the supporting characters are also quite well-etched out but them again, we get to know them through Pen's POV.
The author captures the life on campus, especially for the first year students quite vividly with both the feelings and the raging hormones dealing into wild parities till dawn, sex and drugs. The author arrests the inviting feelings of the first years students that they get when they see and hear anything and everything.
The mystery part is tightly wrapped under layers of misdirection and twists that will keep the readers anticipating and questioning the characters as well as the story till the very climax which is kind of unpredictable and very shocking and definitely it holds the power to blow the minds of many readers. As for me, I kept on turning the pages of this book, only to find myself to be wrong and thoroughly surprised with the revelation. And I bet not only the regular crime fiction or thriller readers will find it compelling but will also enthrall the minds of other genre readers too.
Verdict: Here comes an extremely dark, twisted and tantalizing as well as addictive psycho thriller that is an absolute must-read.
Courtesy: Thanks to the publisher for providing me with an ARC of the book for review purpose.
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Author Info:
All These Perfect Strangers is Aoife Clifford’s first novel, but she has already won the two major Australian crime writing prizes in short story form: the Ned Kelly - SD Harvey Short Story Award and the Scarlet Stiletto. She was also shortlisted for the UK Crime Writers Association Debut Dagger. In 2013, she was awarded an Australian Society of Author's mentorship for All These Perfect Strangers.
She lives in Melbourne with her husband and three children.
Visit her here
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