Façade

A drowned child. Estranged sisters. A once-perfect home.
Silence echoes louder than truth.

When seventeen-year-old Rachel’s baby brother drowns and her older sister, Imogen, escapes to live abroad with Simon, her musician boyfriend, Rachel must face the family’s grief and disintegration alone.

Twenty years later, Rachel is a successful businesswoman, with a daughter of her own, supporting her parents and their elegant Georgian home, The Old Rectory, that shackles them to the past.

Simon’s sudden death in Ibiza brings Imogen back, impoverished and resentful. Her family owes her, and she will stop at nothing to reclaim what she believes is rightly hers.

The rift between the sisters seems permanent. While Imogen has lived a nomadic life, filled with intrigue, in Spain and Tunisia, Rachel’s has appeared stable and successful but, behind the veneer, cracks are appearing. Now, she is vulnerable.

As the wall of silence and secrecy crumbles, danger stalks Rachel’s family. She must re-examine her baby brother’s death, find out what happened in Tunisia, and fight to hold onto everything she’s achieved –or risk losing it all.

Façade is a gripping tale of loss, guilt and danger.
Purchase Link – mybook.to/facade

Helen Matthews writes page-turning psychological suspense novels and is fascinated by the darker side of human nature and how a life can change in an instant. Her first novel, suspense thriller After Leaving the Village, won first prize in the opening pages category at Winchester Writers’ Festival, and was followed by Lies Behind the Ruin, domestic noir set in France, published by Hashtag Press. Her third novel Façade will be published by Darkstroke in September 2020.

Born in Cardiff, Helen read English at the University of Liverpool and worked in international development, consultancy, human resources and pensions management. She fled corporate life to work freelance while studying for a Creative Writing MA at Oxford Brookes University. Her stories and flash fiction have been shortlisted and published by Flash 500, 1000K Story, Reflex Press, Artificium and Love Sunday magazine.

She is a keen cyclist, covering long distances if there aren’t any hills, sings in a choir and once appeared on stage at Carnegie Hall, New York in a multi-choir performance. She loves spending time in France. Helen is an Ambassador for the charity, Unseen, which works towards a world without slavery and donates her author talk fees, and a percentage of royalties, to the charity.

Social Media Links –
Twitter – @HelenMK7
Instagram – @helen.matthews7
https://www.facebook.com/HelenMK7Writer
Website – https://www.helenmatthewswriter.com

MY REVIEW:

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ 5 out of 5

A family with a lot of secrets. One sister wants to destroy the other and blames everyone else for the problems in her life.

Façade is the perfect name for this book. The Stapleton family puts on a great façade for the outside world, but the women in this story are harboring a lot of secrets, some from each other and it will destroy this family.

Imogen is the oldest and she is a wild child. She is spoiled and believes that because her family has money that she should get what she wants no matter what. Unfortunately, she does not outgrow this attitude as she gets older, but it seems to progress and get worse. She will stop at nothing to get what she believes she is entitled to.

Rachel is the second child of the Stapleton family and has always worked for what she wants and has. She started her own business while raising her young daughter from home, and she has taken over the burden of the mortgage on her parents’ home. She has kept her secrets from her boyfriend and because she can’t be honest with him, she won’t marry him. They live together and raise their daughter together. Everyone in her family, including Jack, her live in boyfriend, believes that because she owns her own business that she is rolling in money, but they have no idea that she struggles to keep everything afloat, including her business. She just wants a normal life with her daughter and Jack, but when her sister returns home things get even worse.

I really enjoyed this book and the characters were great. Imogen is a scary woman. The way her mind works puts everyone she knows is danger. The suspense in this story as well as the story plot kept the pages turning in this book. I never knew what to expect from Imogen, and the secrets being revealed are unpredictable. Rachel is the only sane Stapleton in this story as far as I am concerned. Max’s illness makes him very unpredictable and is probably good for him. If he knew what was going on half the time, I think he could be a game changer. I give this story a 5-star review and if you like stories with family drama, then you’ll love this book.