We all have that friend - the one who doesn't quite belong. Dinah Marshall is that person and knows it. After someone drops out, she's invited to spend the weekend at a luxury holiday home with women she's known since university. However, the gulf between them has widened since then, and Dinah is conscious of being the only one with no money, career, partner or children. Feeling like an outsider, she takes to snooping around the house. She's fascinated by its owners, Sarah and Isaac Rivers - and when she discovers she can secretly stay an extra night, that fascination quickly spirals into obsession.
When Isaac Rivers meets 'Diana Malone' at an exclusive members club, he introduces her to his wife and friends, and she's soon welcomed into the group. She seems to be trying a little too hard, however, and as her somewhat intense behaviour starts to raise both eyebrows and questions, one of her new acquaintances begins to suspect she isn't who she says she is. For Diana - or is it Dinah? -this is a disaster: she's worked hard to get where she has, and these suspicions threaten everything. But Diana isn't the only one with secrets, and if she's going down, then she might just take everyone else with her . . .
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The Perfect Guest by Ruth Irons is published by Black & White Publishing on 20 June 2024. My thanks to the publisher who sent my copy for review as part of this Compulsive Readers Blog Tour
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Oh Dinah! What an incredibly complex, mixed up character you are. A character who will drive the reader to distraction as she makes strange, weird, sometimes dangerous decision after decision. A character who is as unreliable as the majority of the trains running from your local station. A character who will drag you into her crazy world and not let you go until the final pages.
Dinah has joined some friends at a luxury country-house weekend. She wasn't their first choice, someone dropped out, but they've all known each other since University over twenty years ago, so she knows what she's letting herself in for. After all, a couple of nights of pure luxury is far better than her dark, dingy damp flat.
Dinah is definitely the odd one out in this group. She left her Oxford University course early, she doesn't have any money, her car is a rust bucket. Her clothes are shabby, she works a dead-end job in a cafe. The others are all glamorous, fun, successful and have money.
The house that they are staying is extraordinary and Dinah does quite a lot of snooping about. Into rooms that she shouldn't enter, touching things that are out of bounds. It's not long before she's obsessed with the owners; Sarah and Isaac Rivers, and begins to search for them on social media.
And this is the very beginning of a story that is something of a roller-coaster read. Dinah becomes more and more unstable as she works her way into the lives of the Isaac family and their wider circle of friends.
I can tell you that this book will keep you totally engaged throughout. As Dinah reinvents herself, moulding her life and her history to fit her new found friends, she gets herself deeper and deeper into the lies. How on earth is she going to get through this without being found out? I really don't think that she thought it through at all, and there is one particular member of her new circle who is desperate to get rid of her. Little do they know that their plan to get rid of Dinah will open up the biggest, most wriggly can of worms you've ever come across.
Tense, super fast paced, especially towards the end, this is a cleverly structured and well written novel that deals with some dark issues at times. Highly recommended.
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She worked as an actor, musician, and music teacher for many years before turning to writing as a creative outlet, completing courses with Curtis Brown Creative and The Writers Bureau.
Ruth lives in Kingston-Upon-Thames with her husband and two daughters.
The Perfect Guest is her debut novel.
X @RuthIrons
www.ruthiewrites.co.uk
IG @ruth.clarkeirons
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