Today I’m joining the blog tour for Stay. This review is written with thanks to Anne Cater for inviting me on the blog tour and to Orion for my copy of the book via Netgalley.

Blurb:

I simply slung my rucksack on my shoulder and climbed into the car – and into the life – of perfect strangers.

It was meant to be Caitlin’s perfect summer, but betrayed by her best friend and her boyfriend, she finds herself hitchhiking home alone, heartbroken, and penniless.

When a smiling family pulls up on the roadside to help her on her way, she’s relieved – they seem so friendly, safe. And when they offer her a warm bed in their isolated house for the night, she’s grateful not to have to travel back alone in the dark. In any case, she’s in no rush to get home, where a grave secret is lying in wait to blow her family apart.

One night soon turns into two, and then three. The increasingly spellbinding couple wants her to stay, and why shouldn’t she? Their children need a tutor, and the longer she can avoid home, the better. But then an older member of the household warns her to leave immediately. And when her phone suddenly goes missing, when she realises that this perfect family is a perfect lie, it might not be so easy for her to leave…

Review:

Right, confession time: it took me quite a while to get into Stay. The characters made me feel uncomfortable, the atmosphere was stifling and the story itself goes to some of very dark places. Yet this demonstrates the skill of the author because I still wanted to keep reading and to know what the ending would be for the characters. 

We meet Caitlin in 2020, shortly after she’s failed her A Levels. She went to Italy with her boyfriend, but her relationship didn’t work out and panic across Europe about a global pandemic has forced her to come back to England earlier than she would have liked. She definitely has secrets when she arrives at Marcus and Mimi’s home and I was interested to learn more about her through the story. Caitlin is naive and I was often shouting at her through my Kindle, but overall I liked her and wanted her to succeed.

It quickly becomes clear that Marcus and Mimi are not what they seem and I did feel very uncomfortable during their interactions with other people. Their rules and way of living seemed isolating and claustrophobic and this was heightened against the backdrop of the lockdowns. I wanted to get to the bottom of what was really going on in their home, despite my skin crawling so much! Jane Bailey is brilliant at sowing seeds of doubt in the reader’s mind so I was never sure who was telling the truth and who was trustworthy. 

Jane Bailey covers some dark but important issues in Stay. Her writing is not gratuitous but it is sharp and to the point and this makes very difficult reading, and will do so especially for people who have had similar experiences. 

I would definitely read more by this author in future. 

Stay is available from Amazon.

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