Blurb:

For fans of Jane Harper’s The Dry comes a powerful novel about the lengths we will go to keep our family safe. This is a story about good and evil and how life is lived somewhere in between.

Thirty years ago, Vincent King became a killer.

Now, he’s been released from prison and is back in his hometown of Cape Haven, California. Not everyone is pleased to see him. Like Star Radley, his ex-girlfriend, and sister of the girl he killed.

Duchess Radley, Star’s thirteen-year-old daughter, is part-carer, part-protector to her younger brother, Robin – and to her deeply troubled mother. But in trying to protect Star, Duchess inadvertently sets off a chain of events that will have tragic consequences not only for her family, but also the whole town.

Murder, revenge, retribution.

Review:

I’ve heard so many things about We Begin At The End, and all of them amazing, so I was really pleased to finally get to read it, and it was absolutely worth the wait. Chris Whitaker’s writing is sublime: it takes you to all the places in the novel and describes them so vividly that I felt like I was there. He made me feel all the emotions; the anger, the sadness, the despair, the love, and this meant I could not help but keep reading so that I knew what happened to the characters. I was completely immersed in each of their journeys. One of my favourite books of all time is To Kill A Mockingbird. I definitely felt similar vibes from this novel and I don’t think it’s a coincidence that one of the characters in We Begin At The End shares their name with a character from the classic. 

We Begin At The End is set in a small community, where everyone knows everyone, and I felt really keenly the consequences of being different in a place like this, through not only Duchess and her family, but Walk and Thomas Noble amongst others too. I felt that all the characters were really well developed and they all evoked an emotional reaction in me. 

Although this novel is a slight slow burner, there is a mystery at the heart of the plot which intrigued me the whole way through. This is a novel which will stay in my heart for a long time to come. 

We Begin At The End is available from Amazon.