Review: A Fractured Winter

A Fractured Winter by Alison Baillie
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

MY REVIEW

Olivia and her husband Christian live in Switzerland, with children Julian, Marc and Lara.

All is peaceful and happy until, Olivia finds an anonymous note left for her, someone knows her secret!

Then, Sandra, a local child and one of Lara’s friends goes missing after school. They are all distraught, but this affects Olivia badly and she worries about the safety of her own children, almost obsessively.

The story, flips back to Scarborough in 1984 and little Marie is a sad little girl, with no friends and a volatile relationship with her father, due to his moods, her mother tries to keep the peace but life is fraught.

She’s and intelligent girl though and decides to go to university and when she plans to go overseas, her parents show her her birth certificate and her already fragile relationship with her parents is nearly broken.

We then travel to 1998 in Edinburgh and Lucy is attending university, but a little naive and a bit needy, Lucy finds herself pregnant after just one date. What links these girls?

Back to 2016, Switzerland and Olivia meets Aurelia, who is renovating the nearby Grand Wildenbach Hotel, Olivia is drawn to Aurelia and the hotel and the motherly comfort she receives.

But, always wondering what happened to little Sandra, Olivia begins to suspect everyone around her, becoming more and more tense and unhappy.

Alison Baillie has written a marvellously descriptive tale with details of the Swiss culture, food and the landscape which helps add to the atmosphere and then to Olivia’s believable emotional tension.

I felt it showed how feelings of guilt and low self esteem can affect a persons life and the decisions they make and, giving me, as the reader, a slightly unsettled feeling, which is a credit to Alison Baillie’s very clever writing.

There are a few ‘suspicious’ characters, and the creepiness is high right to the very end.... I would highly recommend this to anyone who loves a psychological thriller. A creepy, moody and atmospheric read.

Thank you to Bloodhound Books for the opportunity to participate in this blog tour and for the promotional materials and a free copy of the ebook in exchange for my honest review.


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