4 / 5 ⭐️‘s

"The Birthday Girl" by Sarah Ward

Mona, Beth, and Charlotte find themselves at The Cloister, a remote boutique hotel on a Welsh island, each with their own reasons for being there. But as Mallory Dawson, the night manager and former police detective, discovers, one of these guests is a serial killer with a dark past.

The characters are unique, each with their own secrets and motives.

The tension builds as Mallory realizes that the killer, known as The Birthday Girl, is among the guests at the hotel. The sense of danger and suspicion permeates the story, keeping you on the edge trying to unravel the mystery. The plot has twists and turns that keep the suspense alive until the very end.

The sense of isolation and the hidden secrets of Eldey add to the intrigue, making it a perfect backdrop for a murder mystery.

The ending and the reveal of The Birthday Girl's identity is both surprising and chilling.

Out TODAY: https://amzn.to/3m9LUjF

This ARC was provided by @netgalley in exchange for an honest review. ( )

In the start of a new series, Sarah Ward takes readers to a luxury hotel on a rugged, isolated Welsh island, where an ex-detective, still recovering from the knife wound that ended her police career, has taken a job as a night manager, keeping guests safe. Bad timing: one of the newly-arriving guests is a cold-blooded serial killer, When one of the guests dies after apparently recognizing another of them, Mallory Dawson figures out that she was the only surviving victim of the "birthday girl," who years earlier poisoned all of the girls who came to her party. But which one is it? There are several plausible suspects, but the number dwindles as, one after another, poisoning continues.

There are definite Agatha Christie vibes here, as well as an overall gothic feel, with the rugged island, once a cloister for nuns, cut off by a bad storm. The plot is nicely tangled and the tension ratcheted up along with the characters' anxiety. Yes, it's all pretty implausible, but it makes for an entertaining thriller that's also a palimsest of crime fiction classics, written by someone who knows her genre.

After I finished reading The Birthday Girl by Sarah Ward, I thought this was a good book, but when I started thinking about what I wanted to write for the review I began to realize it was just an okay book for me…. But others may really love it.

Usually if a thriller is thrilling I’ll have it read in a day or two, but I kept reading a few chapters and then put it down to do other things. While I wanted to find out who the birthday girl was, I didn’t find myself rushing to finish.

While there were numerous suspects and Ward started out their chapters with something like; My time table is rushed now and I must finish what needs to be done, so it felt like any/all of them could be the killer, I still didn’t feel deeply compelled to read quickly. I think it could be because we don’t get a lot of back story on many of them and some of the characters felt a bit one note.

We do get more backstory on Mallory, the former cop, but even her information is a bit scarce. We get a mention of the serial killer who hurt her, but not much more. And in regards to her son and ex-husband, the reader gets a feeling that there is more coming in regards to their relationships, but you’ll have to wait for future books. If you loved this book and will be reading more, that works out fine, but if you’re undecided if you want to continue then that may be more frustrating than anything.

I did really enjoy how Ward handled the killer at the end and some of the things in regards to the poisonings were interesting. I could see myself trying the next book in the series, but I hope that Mallory would not hold back so much in making intelligent decisions quickly in regards to the investigation… maybe when her leg is more healed and she’s been on the job longer she’ll be more sure of herself. ( )

I received a copy of this novel from the publisher via NetGalley.

In some ways this was a bit of a repeat of several books I have read recently - a group of people are cut off on an island and get murdered one by one, and it turns out the murders are related to a secret from the past. On the other hand, this was a cut above, partly because Mallory, the heroine, was a reliable narrator and a competent and sensible person. There was a fair amount of 'action' and wandering around in gale force winds etc, which was well-depicted. The identity of the murderer was worked out by a process of elimination and clearing away of clever misdirection, and my only real quibble was that the murderer's motivation was hard to relate to.

I will be looking out for the next in this series. ( )