The Beach House: An absolutely gripping thriller with a stunning twist Paperback – 21 April 2022

Another cracker from Beverley Jones in this psychological thriller that will keep you guessing until the end. On the surface Grace seems to have a perfect life. Loving husband, well-behaved child, a successful career and supportive community. However, it seems Grace is living a life on the edge and the past comes back to haunt her when her neighbour is found in a pool of blood in her house. The handcuffs, rope and red ribbon left by the attacker take Grace back to a night she would rather forget.The past is woven into the story in little instalments to keep the reader guessing and the conflicts within Grace are very real as she realises that her life could be in danger. Bit by bit the mystery unravels until she has to face the consequences of her behaviour when she was a teenager. She’s a liar, unreliable, telling tales to her husband and the police. What will she be capable of in order to keep the false life she’s built intact? You’ll have to read The Beach House to find out. A surprising ending.

Something feels off from the outset, both with Grace and what is actually happening to her and I think Beverley Jones sets it up well, this slightly off-kilter feeling which continues throughout the book.Grace is forced to confront events from a childhood spent on the South Wales coast, what she effectively put all this distance between, and the difficult and tragic story unfolds in what feels like flickering snatches of childhood memories, as if we’re watching an old cine film or video. Myths and legends from the local area wrap themselves around these, much as sea fog curls around the coastal stacks in Oregon, and I relished hearing these and identified so much more with this younger self. (Until it all goes horribly wrong, I hasten to add.)From the chocolate box village Grace grew up in to the hipster coastal town where she escapes, feelings of childhood nostalgia and aspirational lifestyles conspire to create an illusory world where neither people nor places are what they appear. Beverley Jones uses this to excellent effect, while she reveals the messy lives beneath the surface and the swirling mass of lies, longing and misunderstandings which ultimately result in tragedy, much as a school darkroom once exposed a photographic art project and captured something altogether more horrific and disturbing.Beverley Jones never lets us forget the proximity of the sea or the threat it poses. It mirrors the danger Grace perceives as closing in on her and, I have to admit, my own sympathies shifted like the changing tides throughout the book. It’s about a woman who’s run to the edge of the world but whose past has now caught up with her; a woman whose own story is so caught up in local legend that they appear inextricably linked. The Beach House is a tense, slow burn suspense and a wholly captivating read to discover whether Grace can survive.

Grace Jenson lives a fabulous life on the Oregon coast. She has a fabulous family and a fabulous beach house in a fabulous neighbourhood. She also has a past life that is a great deal less fabulous, when she had a different name, Laura Llewellyn, and lived in a very different place, a Welsh village where grim and tragic things happened. She has been hiding from that past but when she finds a body in her kitchen, she guesses it’s found her out. It’s a present-day twisty turning fast paced thriller, but the past story is the really disturbing one, drawing on the darkness that can haunt adolescence. As ever with Beverley Jones’s books, this one is a great read, and definitely recommended.

I absolutely loved this book. I was gripped right from the start when Grace Jensen returns to her picture-perfect Oregon home to find a body in a pool of blood. As the story cleverly unfolds it becomes clear that seemingly model mum and wife Grace has a secret in her past that’s about to catch up with her! Atmospheric, dark and chilling, I couldn’t put it down!

The Beach House jumps straight into a mysterious start when Grace finds a bloodied body in her house. Grace appears to be in shock but what the police fail to realise is that this isn't the first time that things have gotten bloody in the presence of Grace. The book flips from the present time when Grace is living in Lookout Beach in Oregon to Grace's childhood in South Wales, where in another life Grace spent her childhood sharing the local legends with her friends. Beverley does a fantastic job weaving the past and the present into one storyline, keeping you constantly on your toes wondering what secrets Grace has hidden away.Growing up Grace had a small group of friends who would often pass the time sharing the local welsh legends, but when a new girl appears on the scene, things take a drastic turn and Grace's world is thrown upside down.Grace hides away from her past by running to Lookout Beach in Oregon, where she manages to create herself in the image she wishes, but the secrets refuse to stay hidden and someone is desperate to make Grace confront her past.I absolutely loved reading about Grace's childhood, Beverley does a wonderful job describing the perfect Welsh scenery and local legends that I grew up loving myself. It was really refreshing to read a book that really puts Wales in the spotlight and Wales is incredibly lucky to have an author like Beverley Jones to represent them.