The Chateau by Catherine Cooper

 

The Chateau by Catherine Cooper.

Published 2nd September 2021 by Harper Collins.

From the cover of the book:

They thought it was perfect. They were wrong…

A glamorous chateau...

Aura and Nick don’t talk about what happened in England. They’ve bought a chateau in France to make a fresh start, and their kids need them to stay together – whatever it costs.

A couple on the brink...

The expat community is welcoming, but when a neighbour is murdered at a lavish party, Aura and Nick don’t know who to trust.

A secret that is bound to come out…

Someone knows exactly why they really came to the chateau. And someone is going to give them what they deserve.

***********************

Welcome to The Chateau, the follow up to Catherine Cooper's hugely entertaining debut The Chalet which was one of my absolute favourite snowy thrillers from 2020 (read my review HERE).

This time the twisty action takes place in the heart of the French countryside (with a snowy interlude, I am happy to say), where young couple Aura and Nick have relocated with their two small boys to transform a crumbling chateau into a fancy B & B and wellness retreat - and to try to save their marriage. 

At the beginning of the story, we see everything through the eyes of Aura, meeting various new neighbours, a film crew who are there to document their progress restoring the chateau and a mysterious older woman who comes to stay as part of a volunteer scheme. To say they are a mixed bunch is an understatement, and there are some pretty suspicious characters among them - hurray! Although you know Aura and Nick are escaping some murky goings on back home in the UK from the hints she drops, you only start to learn exactly what went on when the story opens up into the very best kind of thriller - a tale from different points of view. As Nick adds his own narrative, and we also meet the character Ella, the action moves back and forth between the time before the move to France and the present, and the gaps slowly start to fill in.

The gloriously twisty story plays out with strange goings on in the chateau, and a slow dawning that the legacy of what Nick and Aura have left behind in the UK is going to haunt them in France, despite the picture-perfect fiction Aura is trying to create about their new lives in a rural idyll. It's not long before a murder shatters their lives and the secrets they have been trying to conceal are bound to be revealed. Someone knows why they have moved here and will not rest until they have their revenge.

As with the The Chalet, Catherine Cooper channels Agatha Christie by throwing together a cast of players who all seem to have something to hide, and this allows her to bring in a crateful of red herrings to distract you from the truth of what is really going on here. I think I suspected almost every single character of being guilty of murder along the way before discovering that their crimes lay in other sinful directions, which kept the entertainment factor high throughout. The tension rises beautifully as threads of desire, deception and vengeance weave into a compelling page turner, and you start to jump at shadows along with Aura, until the truth is revealed in a delectable twist and twist again ending that I did not see coming. And this one also leaves you with a proper chill, dear readers.

Although I can't go into the themes Cooper explores without giving away the game, I was very impressed by the way she raises some interesting questions about moral dilemmas, reputation, conspiracy theories, technology, and the influence of social media in the telling of this tale, which gives it surprising depth too.

This really is another cracking thriller from the pen of Catherine Cooper and I am very much looking forward to whatever her twisty imagination comes up with next. She has confirmed her place among my auto-read list!

The Chateau is available to buy now from your favourite book retailer in paperback, ebook and audio formats.

Thank you to Harper Fiction for sending me a paperback copy of this book in return for an honest review and to Anne Cater of Random Things Tours for inviting me to be part of this blog tour.

About the author:

Catherine Cooper is a freelance journalist living in the South of France with her husband and two teenage children. She moved from London in 2009 so that her children could grow up bilingual and they could all ski more, and to enjoy a more relaxed pace of life. She learned to ski on a school trip when she was 14 and has loved it ever since. She is an avid thriller reader and has been since she discovered Agatha Christie as a child.

The Chalet is her first published full-length novel, though she has also written several (unpublished) thrillers for teens and a (what used to be called) chick lit novel set in TV production. The Chateau is her second published novel.

Other than skiing and reading, she loves travel, rollercoasters, and spends far too much time on social media. Some of her other favourite things include Alan Partridge, sparkly flip flops and salt and vinegar crisps.