The Guilty Party meets The Secret History
Can you forgive a friend?
Strange things bring people together. Like a tragic death.
Over two decades, five friends reunite every other New Year. They celebrate, grieve and heal. Memories grow dusty and the nightmare starts to fade.
On the 20th anniversary, in a remote snowy chalet, old doubts surface.
Wounds reopen and morality comes into question.
… morality comes into question.
Is friendship a safety net or a tie that hobbles to the past?
They thought they knew each other’s secrets.
Did they miss the biggest one of all?
When history is rewritten, they must act to preserve the future.
A fatal decision means this reunion will be their last.
A psychological drama with beautifully portrayed characters and an intricately woven plot. The suspense emerges between the lines, grabs you softly but never lets go.
“Twist follows twist in a riveting mystery as sharp as the shards of glass from a shattered champagne bottle.” Abbie Frost, author of ‘The Guesthouse’
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Every year a group of former students travel to a different place to get together to celebrate and reminisce. This year, a snow covered chalet, brings make that terrible tragedy where they lost one of their own!
This story has quite a few characters to keep up with. However, they are each unique and have their own little quirks. In other words, every single one is flawed and has their own issues. This really keeps the reader guessing!
This novel moves quickly and is definitely intense! Plus, it will down right make you mad at the end! I so wanted to hurt one of the characters! Don’t you love a story which can cause big emotions. This one does!
The narrators, Jess Nesling and Paul Panting did and excellent job with all the characters and their voices. I will be on the look out for more books narrated by these two!
Need a good thriller with a big twist! THIS IS IT! Grab your copy today.
I received this novel from the publisher for a honest review.
The audio of Odd Numbers by J J Marsh was a fulfilling read about six, then five friends, who were affected when tragedy struck on New Year’s Eve of their third year in college. They had gone to the family cabin of one of the members of the group, Mika, which was in his home country of the Czech Republic. One of the family traditions was to jump in the lake and then rush inside to the sauna. Some were more enthused than others, but a hole was cut in the ice, lights were strung along the pathway back, and instructions were given. Several successful jumps were made and then the nightmare began. In what appeared to be a series of coincidences, Dhan made his jump and never came back up. The police were called. In the summer, the lake was dragged. There was no body but no possibility of survival in the freezing temperatures. The next year was too raw, but the following year the five remaining friends started a tradition of meeting for New Year’s weekend alternating years, with alternating people making the arrangements. Occasionally someone brought a guest, but that was never really successful.
As the narration progressed, the people involved revealed more and more of their personalities and even, secrets. It was odd that their lives didn’t merge at all except on these short visits with one another. It seemed like a somewhat mundane, yet intriguing slice-of-life novel, until it didn’t. The characters were good, typical people really, with more to them than met the eye. There were interesting careers and interesting love affairs. The dynamic changed at every meeting, which is reality. Gael was always the outsider. She hadn’t been at the water’s edge the night Dhan died and that seemed to speak to the others. It seemed to make her see it all with a clearer eye. This was billed as a psychological thriller, which it was for a very small portion of the books. It was easy to see part of what was coming, but there was obviously so much more. Interesting book.
The readers were Jess Nesling and Paul Panting, who did a credible job, even voicing the women, without using falsetto or odd voices. It was pretty easy to descetn who was speaking, including accents.
I was invited to listen to a free e-ARC audio of Odd Numbers by Saga Edgemont Audio, through Netgalley. All thoughts and opinions are mine. #netgalley #sagaedgemont #oddnumbers #jjmarsh
Odd Numbers is an adult mystery suspense novel about a group of six former classmates that reunite every year in beautiful locations around the world to ring in the new year. In 1999 as the world prepares for a new millennium only five of them will return from a cold dip in a lake. The group will spend the next twenty years mourning their missing 6th friend and wondering what went wrong.
Odd Numbers is a book about a group of friends that would have probably gone their separate ways if they weren’t bound by the mystery of their missing friend Dan. But as their narratives unfold the reader discovers that Dan wasn’t a great friend and most of the people in that remote lodge had good reason to get rid of him. When the friends return on the 20th anniversary of his disappearance a series of cruel pranks will send the group spinning into accusations and suspicion.
I did the audio of Odd Numbers which was well narrated by the dual voices of Jess Nesling and Paul Panting. The story kept my interest and I enjoyed reading about European locales and the complicated friendships and romances of the six players. The last part of the book and felt a little rushed and it lacked it little oomph for me. Overall this was a solid mystery suspense.
3 stars
I have really enjoyed reading JJ Marsh’s Beatrice Stubbs series of books and also loved her one-off book An Empty Vessel so was looking forward to this entry into psychological drama. It didn’t disappoint and I raced through it quickly, relishing all the twists and turns and peculiar goings on. Written through multiple points of view and across different anniversaries over twenty years, Marsh pulls off what is a tricky and complicated endeavour. The characters are not all likeable – in fact in some cases quite the opposite – but that adds to the interest. They are anyway held together as a friendship group solely because of the death of one of their number on the Millennial New Year’s Eve – which provides the rationale for their biennial get togethers. Without the death of Dhan they would have been unlikely to have remained friends as one character points out and as becomes increasingly apparent. As expected with Marsh, (whose Stubbs books each centre on a different European location) Odd Numbers’ six main characters are all of different nationalities and each biennial get together takes place in a different country, adding interest and colour to the narrative. There’s also an emphasis on food – with a big cook-in a main feature of each of the friends’ gatherings. It actually got me jumping out of bed one Sunday morning to dash into the kitchen and make French Toast! Hadn’t eaten that in years!
A deviation from the author’s very successful Beatrice Stubbs crime novels, this psychological thriller, Odd Numbers, had me intrigued all the way through.
The story is based around six university students who became friends, and who gather in a cabin at a spooky Prague lakeside to celebrate Near Year’s Eve in December of 1999. I imagine that if it hadn’t been for a terrible accident on that night, the friends would likely have drifted apart, as do many university friendships. However, this tragedy keeps them bound in the years to come, and they continue to meet every two years.
Despite having a bit of trouble keeping up with the different characters, time zones and places, I really enjoyed delving into the different relationships, as well as trying to guess what actually happened that night of New Year’s 1999.
Full of intrigue, atmosphere and suspense, I found Odd Numbers hard to put down and would highly recommend it to fans of the psychological thriller genre.
Intelligent, insightful and a blooming good read
Now, I’ve loved author’s Beatrice Stubbs series, but I ventured out of my comfort blanket of Beatriceworld and ventured into the tricky, complex and disintegrating world of Odd Numbers.
So why is this so tricky? You’d think a story of close-knit university friends meeting up every year in locations across the globe would be full of warmth, laughter, support and optimism. But as their lives diverge, eventually they’d drift apart…
However, it doesn’t quite go like that because of one terrible and tragic reunion.
You have to keep your wits about you as the author changes from the ‘main’ narrator, Gael, to each of the others and then round again, but I was never lost. Cleverly, JJ Marsh hooks us firmly into the six distinctive characters, each of which is deftly drawn. You may possibly guess at the mystery, but the strength in this book is how it unfolds and spills the secrets those characters are desperately trying to conceal.
Building the characters, their changes over the years, their guilt, insouciance, curiosity and self-deception is a tour de force and the author is t be congratulated as she brings the story to a shattering climax.
And did I mention it was beautifully written? A highly recommended read.
3.5* – better than ‘okay’.
I chose this book from Rosie Amber’s Book Review Team list because I loved An Empty Vessel by this author, though this book is completely different.
For the past twenty years, Gael, Lovisa, Mika, Simone and Clark have spent every other New Year together, taking it in turns to choose the venue for a short holiday. There used to be six of them, but Dhan died at their Y2K celebration two decades before. At the time it was thought to be a terrible accident, but as the book progresses, we start to wonder if it was suicide, or even murder.
Interesting, interesting – and it is a testament to JJ Marsh’s storytelling skill that I enjoyed much of this, and was eager to find out what happened, despite some issues I had with the novel as a whole.
The book is told in first person chapters from all five friends, and dots back and forth in time between the present and the various reunions of the past twenty years, which were held in many different locations. To say I found the zig-zagging between time and locations confusing is something of an understatement; by half-way through I decided to stop trying to remember exactly where and when I was currently supposed to be, who was married to whom when, what already had or hadn’t happened in the chapter I was reading, and just concentrate on the relationship dynamics, and the uncovering of the mystery.
One of the characters comments that if it was not for Dhan’s death, maybe their friendship would not have endured. I thought she was probably right, as much of the time they don’t seem that keen on each other. None of them are very likeable people (even the ‘nice’ one talks in humourless therapy-speak half the time), but I don’t mind that. I’d rather read about a sociopath than a saint any day; it’s far more interesting, the only problem being not having anyone to root for when all the characters are self-centred, cunning and/or in denial about more or less everything.
Aside from the chaotic timeline, I found it difficult to ‘know’ any of them, because each of their point-of-view chapters is written in much the same ‘voice’, despite their being of different nationalities, different social classes, etc. Aside from the varying subject matter, the odd Americanism from Clark, and Simone being a manipulative, particularly nasty piece of work, they all use the same language, have the same speech patterns, similar mood, tempo, vocabularies. Mika, Lovisa and Gael I could never ‘see’ at all; sometimes I thought I was reading Mika when it was Gael, etc. I also found some of the dialogue unrealistic.
Having said that… (and it’s a big ‘having said that’) I did enjoy reading this book, became immersed in the intrigue and thought the basic plot was great. I liked the slow uncovering of each person’s dark secrets, the truth about Dhan and the final drama, though it felt a bit rushed; I think more could have been made of it. There were a fair few irritations (not least of all the reiteration of the current trend I’ve noticed on new, young audience TV shows: that out of any group of young people, fifty per cent of them will have casual sex with either gender at the drop of a hat), but I found that … yes, I couldn’t put it down. It’s a hard one to rate. Yes, I liked it. Sort of. Mostly.
To sum up: The plot kept me interested throughout. JJ Marsh’s innate talent does come across, despite the book’s weaker elements; although the characters never really came to life for me, I liked the story a lot. So although I couldn’t say ‘yes, definitely, you must buy this’, I also want to say, it’s fun and original, and I did like it. Mostly. Sort of.
JJ Marsh is an author I’ve read great reviews about and has been on my list for a while, so I took the chance when I saw an ARC for her next book had become available. I can’t compare it to the rest of her works, but based on this novel, which is a new genre for her, I wouldn’t hesitate recommending her books, and I look forward to catching up on some of her previous novels.
I think the description above provides plenty of hints as to the plot, and this is one of those novels where the way the story is told and the fine details are fundamental, so I’ll try to avoid over explaining things or giving too many hints (I want to avoid spoilers at all cost). This is a story built around six friends (three women and three men) who meet at university, while they are studying to become international translators, and grow to be quite close. They come from different countries (mostly Europe, although one comes from the US, and one is from Indian origin), have very different personalities and backgrounds, and it’s likely that their friendship would have fizzled and died if not for a tragic event that takes place while they are away celebrating New Year (and the new millennium) in December 1999. After that, they meet every two years, and the event that binds them together weighs heavily on them all, having a very different impact in each one of them. Things come to a head on the 20th anniversary of that fateful New Year’s celebration and readers are privileged witnesses of another night to remember. This novel reminded me of a book I read and reviewed recently, The Hunting Party, but also of films like The Celebration (Festen), where there is a build-up of tension, strained relationships, plenty of secrets and lies, and a surprise or two. Although I think many readers will smell a rat from early on in the novel, even if they get it right (and let’s say things are left open to interpretation), the beauty of this novel is in the way it is built, the variety of points of view, and the psychological insights it offers into a catalogue of characters that are not miles away from people most of us know. Considering this is the author’s first incursion into the psychological drama genre, I take my hat off to her.
There are a variety of themes that come up in the novel, some more important to the action than others, for instance the nature of friendship, the way different people experience grief, the guilt of the survivor, how we change and evolve over time and how our relationships change with us, love, death, careers, priorities, family, charity missions, and, of course, lies.
As for the characters, I won’t go into too much detail about them, because the author does a great job of building them up through the novel, and readers should discover them as they read. Marsh chooses one of the female characters, Gael, as the main narrator, and she starts the story ‘now’ (in 2020). The whole novel is written in the first person, but not all from the same point of view. Although I’ve said that Gael is the main narrator, and she has more chapters than the rest, we also get to hear the voices of the other characters, who take us back into some of the reunions the friends have had over the years, and that allows readers to compare and contrast Gael’s version of the rest of her friends with their own words and insights. Readers can compose a mental picture and fit in the pieces of the puzzle, making their own minds up and deciding if they agree or not with Gael’s perceptions. It also makes for a more rounded reading experience, as we get to know each character more intimately, and perhaps to empathise, if not sympathise, with all of them. I liked Gael from the start: she is articulate, a journalist, and a bit of a free spirit, but she always tries to understand and accommodate others as well, and she is more of the observer and the outsider in the story, for reasons that will become evident to the readers from early on. I particularly enjoyed the fact that the friends are like an ersatz family, with individual roles they always fall back on when they are together (the nurturing mother, the responsible and dependable father, the youngest and spoilt sister, the rushed and sporty brother, the sister whom everybody confides in [Gael]), and this reminded me of Eric Berne’s Games People Play. All the characters are articulate and savvy enough to be aware of this and play it for keeps as well.
The book flows well, and the language used is appropriate to each one of the individual characters, fitting with their personalities and quirks without calling too much attention to itself. It helps move the story along, and manages to build up the tension, even when there isn’t a lot of action in the usual sense. There are mysterious events taking place (some that will have readers wondering if the characters are imagining them or not), clues that sometimes don’t seem to amount to much, hints, and some memorable scenes. But all those elements are woven subtly into the narrative creating a spider web that traps the readers and the more they read, the more they become entangled in the strands of the story and the characters, until it becomes almost impossible to put the book down.
There is a closure of sorts, although the ending is ambiguous and most of the surprises and big reveals have come before then. I liked the fact that there is much left to the imagination of each reader, but I know such things are down to personal taste.
This is a great psychological drama, with engaging characters (some more likeable than others), fascinating relationship dynamics, and a mystery at its heart. It’s a gripping read, perfect to keep our minds engaged and to have us pondering the ins and outs of friendships, relationships, and which actions would push us beyond the limits of forgiveness. A gem.
The last 7% of the e-book contains the first-chapter of the author’s work-in-progress, in case you wonder about its length.