Review of 'Our House'

Our House by Louise Candlish

Fi returns to her home on a wealthy street in London on a Friday only to discover a removals van parked outside with a couple moving their belongings in. This is news to her as she was not aware her house was even on the market. As the novel unfolds we learn that Fi's estranged husband Bram has had his driver's licence suspended but driving anyway eventually causing a fatal accident where he flees the scene unable to accept the repercussions. Approached by a man and woman who seem to know all about what happened he is blackmailed into selling his house out from underneath his family and giving them the proceeds…

An interesting novel that has you hooked from the first few pages as you desire to know what has happened and how things will all turn out. We sympathize with Fi who seems to be the obvious victim here as the insecure, unfaithful husband struggles to find a way out of his difficult situation. The story unfolds both in the present day, where Fi attempts to make sense about the sale of her house, and in two sets of flashbacks, one in the form of Fi telling her story on a confessional web site and Bram on the run writing his suicide note. There are enough turns to keep you interested including several at the end that will likely come as a bit of a shock (with one final big one waiting in the final pages).

I did find some characters quite extreme being quite naïve or so absurdly evil that it really stretched my credibility but all in all the story is, eventually, quite convincing. There is a suggestion here that partly to blame is the increasing use of electronic methods when selling a house but I have to say I found this very helpful when recently buying my own with so many checks and balances that the story that unfolds in “Our House” strikes me as hard to believe though this is covered over with the blackmailers having to resort to more and more criminal efforts to get away with it. In the end it all makes some sort of sense.

Easy to read with enough twists and turns to keep you interested…

Rating: “Nearly perfect, but not quite”

Review Date: 2022-05-08

Genre: General Fiction

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Publication Date: 2018

ISBN: 9781471168062