Blurb:

In this corner of Fife, summer nights meant parties on wind-blown beaches, wrapped in hoodies and denim jackets, pretending you weren’t cold in the stubborn evening light.

JOANIE, 2013. Desperate to flee the claustrophobia of St Rule, Joanie has been looking forward to her big escape. But at the eleventh hour this dream slips through her hands. Devastated, Joanie falls into the orbit of an enigmatic couple – a pair of charismatic academics at the town’s university – who offer her a new kind of freedom.

CAMERON, 2023. When Cameron arrives back in St Rule for Christmas, a question burns in his mind: whatever happened to Joanie? It’s been a decade since he saw his former friend. But as he starts to look for answers, it becomes clear that someone wants to keep this secret buried at all costs. How far should he go in pursuit of the truth?

Review:

Although Bluff isn’t a book I chose specifically for my September reading challenge, it does fit the bill as it was chosen for my local book club by another member, and it’s probably not a book to which I would have been immediately drawn if I was choosing for myself. I am, however, glad I read it and I did find it mostly enjoyable. 

Francine Toon is a fantastic writer and I love the gothic undertones of her work. The small town of St Rule, in which the novel is set, feels quite isolated and most of the characters have secrets that they are hiding. From the outset, I could see that Erin and David, in particular, may not be all they seem, and I was always wary of their behaviour throughout the novel. The tension that Francine Toon built up through her writing is immense and it makes the story really compelling. 

Bluff  is told from three different perspectives: Cameron in 2023, Joanie in 2013 and extracts from an account of an incident written by Joanie in 2012. I found this intriguing, as I wanted to know how the earlier events were connected to the more recent ones. I loved the element of mystery that runs through the novel.

Towards the end of Bluff, there are a number of revelations and unfortunately I found them underwhelming. I did not feel they did justice to the tense atmosphere that had been created throughout the novel. Despite this, I would be interested to read more from the author in future. 

Bluff is available from Amazon.

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