Tense, gripping and with a twist you won’t see coming, The Split is an explosive new stand-alone thriller from Sharon Bolton about a woman on the run. No matter how far you run, some secrets will always catch up with you… The remote Antarctic island of South Georgia is about to send off its last boat of the summer – which signifies safety to resident glaciologist Felicity Lloyd. Felicity … resident glaciologist Felicity Lloyd.
Felicity lives in fear – fear that her ex-husband Freddie will find her, even out here. She took a job on this isolated island to hide from him, but now that he’s out of prison, having served a term for murder, she knows he won’t give up until he finds her.
But a doctor delving into the background of Felicity and Freddie’s relationship, back in Cambridge, learns that Felicity has been on the edge for a long time. Heading to South Georgia himself to try and get to her first is the only way he can think of to help her.
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The Split was a very fast read for me because I wanted to know what was going to happen next. And the descriptions of South Georgia were fantastic. Sharon Bolton really made you feel like you were there in the cold and desolate land, and she combined interesting scientific and historical facts.
At first I was a bit concerned because even though I was enjoying the scenery and history, I didn’t know how Sharon Bolton could keep up the suspense surrounding Felicity and what was going to happen with the person who was coming after her. Felicity and her stalker end up on a deserted area of South Georgia that has only the two of them there. The stalker would find her pretty fast, so how was she going to keep a 400 page book interesting for that long? And then Bolton switched to a different time period before Felicity was in South Georgia and the book got even more interesting.
Felicity ends up in a hospital and doesn’t remember where she got her injuries. She ends up seeing a psychiatrist, Joe, and eventually he pulls out of her that there have been periods of time missing, that she’s hearing voices, and becoming increasingly paranoid. Felicity needs him to sign off on her health so she can take her trip to South Georgia, so she’s trying to limit what she tells him so she doesn’t seem crazy. But you can only contain the crazy for so long before it comes out.
Joe has his own things going on, since he’s recently back to work after being stabbed by a patient. He doesn’t want to get drawn into Felicity’s drama, but he can’t help himself. Even with his police detective mother telling him to back away, Joe begins to realize that there really is something strange going on with Felicity. But just when he’s about to figure it out, the time frame changes again.
This happens a few times in the book and each time I got drawn in even more. And even though there are a couple of things that stood out as a bit problematic (but I don’t want to mention them because of spoilers), Bolton shows once again she is a master at misdirection and suspenseful story telling. I’m already looking forward to her next book and luckily she has a bunch of other books for me to read before then!
4 stars
Now that Felicity Lloyd’s ex-husband is out of prison, she is terrified that he will find her. So terrified that she flees to Antarctica. She takes a job as a glaciologist with the British Research Station.
When the last tour boat of the summer arrives, she spots Freddie among the people and flees. She has told her co-workers at the station that she is going to Bird Island to study the fledglings. But she has really gone somewhere else. Terrified and alone, she begins to hear things that are not there – voices, footsteps and other noises.
But there is another character in the book who is looking out for Felicity.
During a previous timeline as told in the book, Felicity meets Joe, her therapist. In these vignettes it is revealed that Felicity has had for some time problems with reality. Or, does she? And Felicity is not alone in her pain and confusion.
Eddie, her ex, has figured out to which island she went. He has seen her. He is following her and yelling out to her.
This book will keep the reader guessing. It was very well written and plotted. There were many surprises and a few twists. I liked the use of psychology. It was well done. However, I was a little disappointed that Joe didn’t cotton on to the problems that Felicity had sooner. I had her figured out much sooner in the book. I liked Delilah. She was a hoot with her pink hair – at her age! I worried about Joe. He seems to get way to close to his clients. That’s very dangerous for someone who counsels vulnerable people. I decided that he was a little incompetent, and I couldn’t get a grasp on his personality what with all the enmeshment with his clients. The parts of the book that described Antarctica were simply wonderful. The doomed explorer Ernest Shackleton was even mentioned.
I want to thank NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for forwarding to me a copy of this very good book for me to read, enjoy and review.
It was a good read although a little predictable. some twists along the way
A tense, riveting read that kept me gripped from the start! The writing is incredible and pulled me into the story, and I couldn’t put it down. There are plenty of twists as the story is gradually revealed, and kept me guessing until well towards the end. A great read I highly recommend.
New author for me and I will definitely check out more of this author’s work in the future.
So, for the most part, I found this enjoyable with lots of twists and turns.
The story is told from multiple POV’s and it’s one of those that definitely becomes clearer the further you read.
This starts off feeling fairly transparent but the further you get the more you realize there’s more here than originally meets the eye.
The story revolves around Felicity starting in present-day where she is running scared from a mysterious past and then moving backwards where we learn how we arrived at this present point in time.
This for me did start fairly slowly and the second part of this I found to be much better and faster-paced than the first.
I also managed to guess fairly easily what was occurring.
I still thought this was well written and engaging it just took me a while to become invested.
On reflection, I would recommend this and it had many more positives than negatives and overall it was an intriguing read.
I voluntarily reviewed a copy of The Split
Reviewed By Beckie Bookworm
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I enjoy a great psychological Nordic noir thriller that is so clever, I never see what is coming. This was truly an enjoyable book that was a delight to read as someone who enjoys reading exciting new thrillers. I was so happy to find one that truly was captivating, full of surprises, very deceiving twists and turns at every corner. I am definitely a Sharon Bolton fan after reading this truly amazing book with a jaw dropping twist. What a great read! I highly recommend this one.
Felicity is a glaciologist who has made the career decision to move to an isolated island in Antarctica to do research. She has done this because she lives in constant fear that her husband, Freddie, will come after her. When he is released from prison after serving a term for murder, he does in fact come after her, but things in Felicity’s past and present are not at all what they seem.
This was a fabulous read that I could not put down. It was really well written with characters that were genuine and intriguing. This was a book which one cannot tell too much about because there would be too many spoilers. However, this was another true thriller from an author whose work is always outstanding. Very strongly recommend.
Thank you to Netgalley, the author Sharon Bolton, and the publisher St. Martin’s Press, for a free ARC in return for my honest review. The opinion expressed here is all mine. A super read. Don’t miss this one.
The Split is set in two cities, beginning in South Georgia, a remote Antarctic island which can only be reached by boat. Glaciologist Felicity Lloyd has been living on the island for months – happily isolated from most of the world, particularly the ex-husband she fears. She took this job to hide from him, but now that he’s out of prison, having served a term for murder, she’s afraid he’ll find her, even in this place that feels like the end of the world. The story then jumps back in time to Cambridge, where we learn about the months leading up to Felicity’s terrified run to South Georgia. Did she flee because of more than her ex? When the timeline jumps back to the present in South Georgia, Felicity is on the move, but in the Antarctic there is danger all around her setting up a suspenseful climax.
This fast paced thriller is a twisty, gripping read. Particularly the sections set in South Georgia – the wildlife, ice, snow, glaciers, and generally desolate and isolated location are descriptively written and set a wonderfully tense scene. Frequent readers of suspense may not be surprised by the mystery resolution, but that did not significantly decrease my enjoyment of the book. 4.5 Stars
SPOILER rape and other abuse of an adult; rape and other abuse of child; murder END SPOILER
Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for the ARC. The opinions in this review are honest and my own.
I absolutely love Sharon Bolton and I have loved all of her books that I’ve read to date, and The Split was no different. I could NOT put it down and I read almost the entire thing in one sitting!
It turns out that I had a lot of the book figured out, but that didn’t take away from how much I enjoyed it. Much of the book, especially the parts in South Georgia, were seriously atmospheric and I was so fascinated with that setting. It makes me wonder what made Bolton choose it and how she knew about it.
Since I read The Split in almost one sitting you probably already know what I’m going to say, but this book is very fast-paced and it’s something you want to completely devour. I love binge-worthy books, and this is definitely one of those. I loved the short chapters and different character viewpoints, and at no time was I confused while reading.
There is chilling and disturbing content, but it is worth the read based on the setting of South Georgia alone, and I loved Bolton’s descriptions of all the animals and surroundings. Even if you can see the ending coming like I did, I think you will still enjoy this binge read of a thriller, and I HIGHLY recommend it!
Thank you to the publisher for providing me with an advance review copy of this book, all opinions and thoughts are my own.
Thank you, NetGalley, for my eARC.
Felicity is on the run from Freddie. She takes on a project in South Georgia, a remote, harsh, sparsely-populated setting, accessible only in the summer and only by ferry. Hiding from a man she is terrified of, but doesn’t clearly remember except for glimpses, flashes of memory, and…scars. Bruises easily explained away by her line of work as a glaciologist.
Set in Cambridge and South Georgia, the book is divided into four parts depicting shifts in time. Short chapters are told from the perspectives of Felicity, Joe(her psychiatrist), Freddie, and Shane(a significant character).
Although this book had its moments, I felt the plot to be slow-paced and scattered. Too much going on and too many characters to keep track of. It does redeem itself somewhat towards the end when it picks up speed and adds a twist. I had heard good things about The Craftsman so I was very excited when I was approved for this title. But, overall, it fell flat for me.
Complex, vivid, and twisty!
The Split is a sharp, chilling thriller set in both Cambridge, England and the isolated, glacial wilderness of the South Georgia Island that takes you into the life of Felicity Lloyd, a young woman tormented by a relentless stalker, a resourceful night visitor, and a mind riddled with distorted memories and inexplainable gaps in time.
The prose is taut and intense. The characters are complex, unstable, and secretive. And the plot using flashbacks and told from multiple perspectives unravels briskly into a story filled with suspicious personalities, unreliable characters, unexpected twists, mayhem, fixation, instability, violence, and murder.
Overall, The Split is an unpredictable, tortuous, mindblowing tale by Bolton that keeps you guessing from the very first page and leaves you unsettled, mystified, and highly entertained.
The setting for the first part of the novel, the Antarctic, specifically the island of South Georgia, is a character onto itself. Ms Bolton made me feel so in the moment while I was reading this. It definitely feels as though it transported me into a different place. Sounds corny, I know, but that’s how it felt. Here’s an example of the incredible descriptions of a scene while they were on ice, “The ice mountain leans towards them, gravity winning the battle with momentum and the sea begins to churn. The new iceberg topples, finds its new horizontal gravity and a wall of turquoise water, thirty metres high, surges towards them”. Yikes!!
So many reviews have already been written about the main story so I’ll keep it short and leave the rest to your imagination.
We first meet Felicity, a well known glaciologist who is currently stationed in South Georgia. The story is divided into parts, South Georgia Present Day is Part One. She is worried about the last tourist boat that is arriving. There is someone in her life that she is very afraid of and she worries that he will find her here, even so far from. If her worst fears are confirmed she has a plan. ..
Cambridge 9 months earlier. We will meet the other players in this thriller of a ride; Joe Grant, Felicity’s psychotherapist, working hard to unravel Felicity’s myriad of symptoms and fears. She feels she is constantly being watched, she thinks someone has been in her home and finds a diary that she doesn’t remember writing. Joe himself has just recovered from a knife wound sustained from an attack by one of the homeless people, Ezzy Sheeran, whom he works with pro bono. Much more occurs in Cambridge but I will leave that for you to discover.
Joe’s mother, Delilah, is a police woman and has been following her son’s cases closely. Their relationship sometimes seems a little too close to be healthy, but for the most part they seem to be able to run through ideas together helping Joe and the police.
In the last part of the novel we are whisked back to South Georgia where an incredibly feverish search is on to find Felicity. She was last known to be headed to Bird Island, a place even more remote than South Georgia. The weather turns extremely harsh and with multiple people searching by land and sea there is never a slow moment. Even in the harbor master’s office, “Joe can see a waterfall like a silver ribbon, slicing a snow-tipped summit in half, and the rusting carcass of a wrecked steam ship stranded in the bay. On the northern horizon, a berg lies like a fallen mountain and the air above it is alive with seabirds . . .there is an eardrum-splitting cacophony of noise . . .the bird screams and the grunting of seals.”
This novel got it all right for me. An intricately woven plot, great characters that are believable, tension and fear that never quits and an atmosphere that is transformative. This book had me from the first few pages and just when I thought I had it all figured out, nope, wrong!!!!
I would recommend this book to anyone who enjoys a fast paced twisty thriller, well written and exciting. I am still googling South Georgia and the photos that I find are incredible and fascinating. I highly recommend taking a tour of where the story takes place.
I received an ARC of this novel from the publisher through Edelweiss. It is set to publish on April 28, 2020.
The Split is a page turning dark suspenseful novel that is told from two locales Cambridge England and South Georgia where you can almost here the icebergs cracking and the cold penetrates your very bones.
Secrets and the past always catch up with you !
Read every word, there are always clues (missed a few) in Sharon Bolton’s mesmerizing novels that lead to twists and turns with a great ending.
Don’t miss The Split with its atmospheric aura.
Great read as always with Sharon Bolton!!
Thanks to NetGalley and St Martin’s Press, Minotaur Books for twisted read ! Loved it !