Synopsis: A perfect life, a perfect love - and a perfect murder. For over forty years Carol Cage has been living as a recluse in her mansion, Oaktree House. Fear is her constant companion. She's been keeping a secret - and it's about to be unearthed.When she receives a compulsory purchase order for her home, she knows that everyone is going to find out what she did to survive her darkest weeks in 1970. She writes her confession so that we can understand what happened because she wasn't the only one living a lie. The events that turned her fairy-tale life into a living hell were not all they seemed. She's determined not to pay for the mistakes of others; if she has to suffer, then they will too.
Carol Cage has a terrible secret ... and she's about to exact retribution on everyone who'd let her suffer.
I literally could not put this down. So invested up in Carol's story, I was compelled to continue. Who was this "girl" - what had she to do with the story - what was her relationship with Carol?
Hill suckers the reader in from the first page:
"Perry Cutler and I buried Frankie Dewberry in the orchard. He lies not far from the garden wall, under the shade of the apple trees. Over the last forty-odd years I’ve spent many hours sitting on the wooden bench we placed next to his grave. It’s a peaceful spot near the boundary wall running to the south-west of my estate. Sitting near him gives me great comfort. I tell Frankie how restricted my life has been since his death. I tell him how sorry I am that our daughter, Francine, died so young. Although I loved him, I never tell him I’m sorry he’s dead."
Of course we want to know why Frankie lies buried in an orchard for forty odd years - what drove the reclusive and slightly unhinged Carol to such drastic measures. As she mentions, she is not sorry he is dead but instead laments that her crime is about to be discovered:
"My house is to be demolished to make way for a ring road. They will find Frankie’s resting place when they cut into the soil protecting my lover, my darling man. Police will ask questions. Strangers, who know nothing about me or my pain, will look at me in disgust."
Hill takes us back to those early days, forty years ago (1969/1970), as we follow our teenage narrator Carol through the euphoria of an intoxicating first love to the final, toxic ending, before we are brought back into the present (2016) to ponder just what Carol's final fate will be.
As I mentioned, I was hooked from the very beginning - I sat and just read. Hill elicits a strange sort of sympathy for Carol whose obsessive naivety over her relationship with Frankie is merely the first ripple of many - ".. we all paid for the emotions Frankie stirred in us ..". But is Carol the reliable narrator that she appears to be? As the past is slowly dredged up and laid bare, Carol reflects: "I have taken the blame for other people's deceitfulness and secrets." Revenge is a dish best served cold and efficiently - and "The Girl" will have her revenge!
There are many plot twists and turns, just as you head down one garden path you are redirected to another, and so on, not quite knowing where you are heading and even if it is the right direction in the first place! There is a tinge of the gothic to all of this as Carol's life begins its downward spiral.
I really don't know how Hill will improve on this - it is one of those stories that is right up there with the likes of M. Night Shyamalan's "The Sixth Sense" or AJ Finn's "The Woman in the Window" or Paula Hawkins' "The Girl on the Train" or even "Gone Girl" by Gillian Flynn. I could almost image Hitchcock rubbing his hands with glee to be able to bring this to the big screen.
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