Other People's Secrets

by Louise Candlish

Ginny and Adam Trustlove arrive on holiday in Italy torn apart by personal tragedy. Two weeks in a boathouse on the edge of peaceful Lake Orta is exactly what they need to restore their faith in life - and each other.



Twenty-four hours later, the silence is broken. The Sale family have arrived at the main villa: wealthy, high-flying Marty, his beautiful wife Bea, and their privileged, confident offspring. It doesn't take long for Ginny and Adam to be drawn in, especially when the teenage Pippi introduces a new friend into the circle. For there is something about Zach that has everyone instantly beguiled, something that loosens old secrets - and creates shocking new ones.



And, yet, not one of them suspects that his arrival in their lives might be anything other than accidental . . .

Genres: Fiction, Romance, Chick Lit, Family

385 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2010

About the author

Hello and welcome to my page... You may already know my domestic noir thrillers or perhaps you're curious and not sure which to try first - either way, you're in the right place!

My latest is OUR HOLIDAY, a Sunday Times bestseller, WHSmith Richard & Judy Book Club pick and Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year 2025 nominee. It features my favourite ever love-to-hate characters Perry and Charlotte, second home owners in the idyllic English beach resort of Pine Ridge. It's now in development for the screen - I'll share news on that as soon as I can.

Next up is A NEIGHBOUR'S GUIDE TO MURDER, published in July 2025 (UK) and 2026 (US), available to pre-order now.

Last year I celebrated my 20th anniversary as an author with the news of two prestigious awards for my 90s-set thriller THE ONLY SUSPECT: the Capital Crime Fingerprint Award for Thriller of the Year and the Ned Kelly Award for Best International Crime Fiction. Stay tuned for TV news on that one too - it will be the next of mine to hit our screens!

OUR HOUSE is the one you may know me for as it's now a major four-part ITV drama starring Martin Compston and Tuppence Middleton (watch the full series free on ITVX). This is the novel that turned my career around, winning the 2019 British Book Awards Book of the Year - Crime & Thriller and shortlisted for the Goldsboro Books Glass Bell Award, the Capital Crime Amazon Publishing Best Crime Novel of the Year Award​, and the Audible Sounds of Crime Award. It was also longlisted for the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award and the Specsavers National Book Awards. A Waterstones Thriller of the Month, it recently received a Nielsen Bestseller Silver Award for 250,000 copies sold.

A bit about me: I live in a South London neighbourhood not unlike the one in my books, with my husband, daughter and a fox-red Labrador called Bertie who is the apple of my eye. Books, TV and long walks are my passions - and drinking wine in the sun with family and friends. Authors I love include Tom Wolfe, Patricia Highsmith, Barbara Vine, Agatha Christie and Evelyn Waugh. My favourite book is Madame Bovary.

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Reviews

[Dale Harcombe · Rating 2 out of 5]

The story concerns two families. One is Ginny and Adam Trustlove who have recently suffered a devastating loss. They are staying at the boathouse on the edge of Lake Orta. The other family in the next door luxury mansion are the Sale family. This consists of Marty, his wife Bea and three adult, or supposedly close to, offspring - Dom, Esther and Pippi. Dom is trying to come to terms with his own secret and not handling it at all well. Esther seems to serve no purpose in the novel except be the token lesbian and her mother’s favourite. Pippi is the most spoiled obnoxious brat. Martin is a serial womaniser and Bea has put up with his affairs for years. But she has decided now it is time to take action. Into this family group comes Zach, who Pippi immediately latches onto. But it is not Pippi he is interested in.
The secrets for the most part in this book were fairly obvious from the start I thought except for perhaps the last one. And that one just didn’t ring true to me. The characters themselves behaved like juveniles and did more to annoy me rather than endear themselves to me. While I felt sorry for Ginny and Adam and their predicament, I still didn’t like them either. I didn’t find it ‘page-turning’ or ‘thought-provoking’ as Glamour magazine announced on the cover. Nor did I find it,’ clever, engrossing and unputdownable’ as another author said on the cover. I thought several times about putting it down. My problem was I had not be able to get to the library. Or it would have been put down. If you want a light beach read about relationship and secrets, you may enjoy it. But it’s not one I would recommend. But then we are all different in the way we respond to books and characters.

[Suz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Finally an audio book that surpassed the three star stage! A glorious narrator that added so much to this family drama. It really is as the title suggests. Everyone has their secrets, and a few families have merged together on holidays in Italy. Loss, heartbreak, fidelity and family dynamics come crashing together at this idyllic location - the dramas unfolding don't match the lovely surrounds.

Bea and Ginny are lovely ladies to read about, these two were my pick of a large ensemble cast. The mysterious Zach turns up out of the blue, and his character seems to tie everyone together, and not for all good reasons.

This writer (whom I'd never heard of) forms her words in a way to savour easily, Ginny's feelings of loss feel very real and Bea's determination to follow through with recently formed life changing decisions equally so.

I'd say 3.5 stars, rounded to 4. An enjoyable read.

[Anni · Rating 3 out of 5]

I must confess to a guilty addiction for novels about dysfunctional families (is there any other sort) and find myself entranced as usual by this author's expertise in writing them.
An underlying theme in this story is fatherhood and its effects on all the characters - but four in particular. The secrets are revealed gradually, as in any mystery novel: some are obvious from the beginning, others emerge with differing degrees of disbelief-suspension.
I didn't guess the final reveal - but let's face it, it was the least convincing of them all. Also, several of the people involved seem to behave totally out of character - which may be excused as a fiction device, as the well-known distancing effect of being on holiday in a foreign resort.
However, I feel that Candlish is stretching our incredulity to the limits in this instance, so I am knocking a star off my rating.

[Rebecca Neely · Rating 2 out of 5]

I made it to Chapter 12, then skimmed ahead to ending. I wanted to like these characters, just could not get invested. Incredibly slow, nothing happening. DNF

[Caroline · Rating 1 out of 5]

I tried, I really tried to like this book (have read one of her previous books and very much enjoyed it).

I got as far as page 140, but am giving up here - I find my mind continually detaching from the story as I read, and thinking about what I'm having for dinner, or some such! Which is always a sign that I'm not enjoying it.

Over descriptive, annoying characters, and VERY slow - I shan't be sorry to move onto something else at all.

[Kerryrosalia · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was so dull!

[Fiction Doodle · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5 stars

[Mel (who is deeply in love with herself) · Rating 3 out of 5]

First of all, I liked the author's writing style; it wasnt crammed with loads and loads of unnecessary details about the view or the characters; i really hate that, and Jonathan Kellerman is the main guilty party as far as i'm concerned (he writes a whole page on the characters' clothes and face, but thank God for his awesome plots, he redeems himself then.)
Anyway, back to the book: The main fault (for me) I found in Other People's Secrets is basically the timespan;
TWO WEEKS?!?!?!
How the hell can so much happen in only two weeks! I nearly choked with laughter thinking of the two poor families, with all this mayhem thrown at them left, right and centre. i mean, they had barely caught their breaths before another bombshell flew in from nowhere.
A major turn-off in my opinion.
Another thing is the prologue, as it was just so obvious who the people were in question less than halfway through the book.
SPOILER (KIND OF...:0)
And another thing (oh my God i'm getting carried away now...) :
The supposedly big secret of Dom's was so obvious as soon as the doomed convo with Bea and him started. And as soon as a certain person's name was thrown into the conversation, i was certain of the whole thing, os when the big revelation finally came out i didnt feel any surprise at all.
And the big drunken rant of his didnt help much, either.



SPOILER!!!!





i cant believe that the author actually imagined that the Zach&Bea thing would work.

Because it seriously didnt.
I'm surprised she hasnt been slaughtered by her fans yet for making such a big mistake; like i said, the timespan just didnt allow me to believe any kind of connection was drawing the two together except for serious lust :)

And it wasnt much of a surprise when Zach made his big announcement either, as all the descriptions of him looking thoughtfully at that boathouse of theirs was such a big give-away..
But, credit to the author that I wasnt expecting it to be you-know-who's you-know-what, but more related to the other person



Oh gosh, i hate trying to write reviews without spoilers.

[Mandy Baggot · Rating 2 out of 5]

The set up for this book showed great promise but it didn't deliver the goods for me. I liked Louise Candlish's style of writing and she is adept at making you feel the sorrow/turmoil of her main characters but I found the book trickled along for the most part and nothing much happened. The story seemed to wind along at a holiday pace and never really picked up. Pippi was the most well drawn of the characters and the strength of her seemed to make the other characters fall by the wayside in comparison. I never felt any real empathy for any of them, Ginny was obviously grief stricken but by halfway through the book I wanted to shake her, I never really 'got' the characters of Martin, Adam or Zac and had little sympathy for Bea or her son's dilemma which was quite obvious from the first conversation about it and was unnecessarily shrouded in 'mystery' for too long.
I wanted more action from the book, it was too slow paced for me and I had hoped for more.

[leiturasemfimavista · Rating 3 out of 5]

2,5⭐

[Cleopatra Pullen · Rating 3 out of 5]

A boathouse by Lake Orta sounds the most wonderful place for a holiday, and it is a break from life that Ginny and Adam Trustlove need. They have recently had a stillborn son and need to reconnect and find a way forward from this terrible tragedy. The boathouse seems to be the perfect place to do so, peace and quiet and a beautiful blue lake.

The couple have only just begun to settle in when the peace is shattered by Bea and Marty Sale and their three children, Dom, Esther and Pippi who have come to stay at the main villa. Noisy and full of life the couple are spending a last holiday together with their adult and teenaged children before the last, Pippi flies the nest.

The clue to this story really is in the title. All of the holidaymakers are hiding a secret of one sort or another, some easy to discern, other’s less so. From successful Marty who has promised to take a well-earned break from their clothing line who is only too glad to widen the party to include the less outgoing Trustloves to Pippi and the young man she draws into the circle hoping for a summer romance.

The book follows the summer break of both parties though the days of the holiday, and we get to see how the newcomer to the group, Pippi’s find Zach fits in. Because, yes you’ve guessed it he is also hiding a secret!

This book lets us examine each of the characters but the two that stand out for me are Bea who is questioning the intervening years since she was fully involved in what has become Marty’s business and Pippi who is an entitled spoilt little rich girl who is totally unused to getting what she wants.

There are some big themes in this story, notably grief and adultery but there are some other aspects of relationships that are less often explored in this type of books – I can’t tell you what because it’s a secret!!

Louise Candlish is excellent at setting the scene, I had no trouble picturing the setting at all but I wasn’t quite so convinced by the characters in this book as I have been in other books by this author. Part of the problem is the speed, all within a two-week holiday, that all the secrets come tumbling out, the characters are so busy reacting to the latest bombshell for them to feel like people you’d know. It isn’t so much that their actions were unrealistic, more that I didn’t have a baseline as a starting point. I wasn’t overly convinced that Bea and Ginny would have shared their innermost thoughts quite so readily, the women came from different worlds and didn’t really have an awful lot in common because of that. But hey this was a holiday and we all know anything can, and does happen then.

Although maybe not as suited to my reading tastes as the other books by this author this is an entertaining read which is entirely suited for holiday reading where you can be transported to another life which is, hopefully, far more hectic than yours.

[Calvin · Rating 2 out of 5]

Sigh. I expected to dislike Our House based on the "there's a killer twist RIGHT AT THE END" marketing which drives me to distraction. And I really enjoyed it. So I was looking forward to reading this. And it was SO intensely boring.

Not only was it dull, it was so entirely unbelievable. Full of two-dimensional stereotypes and absolutely NO tension, this was a very tiresome read.

[Danielle Dent · Rating 2 out of 5]

It took me a lot to get into this book and I couldn't summon the enthusiasm for it. I previously have read another of Louise's novels and didn't enjoy this one as much. The ending left me feeling a bit wanting as well - would have liked an epilogue.

[Tracey Harriman · Rating 2 out of 5]

First off, a positive note. The descriptive writing was lovely.
However... it just went on and on and on, with nothing happening. I just couldn't care less about the characters.
Really wish I'd gone with my gut instinct and given up on the book.

[Dancingsocks · Rating 2 out of 5]

An ok read but a little over contrived and long-winded

[Renita D'Silva · Rating 4 out of 5]

Poignant

[Fay Flude · Rating 5 out of 5]

I do love a Louise Candlish novel and rate this particular one highly.
I listened to an audiobook version in order to travel to Lake Orta with the Sale family and separate holidaymakers Ginny and Adam Trustlove.
My curiosity was piqued from the very beginning wondering who Zach was as the story quickly diverts from mentioning him, into the obvious sadness and melancholy of Ginny who is only going away with Adam as an attempt to heal. It is clear she doesn't think for one moment that is going to happen and you can't help but feel sorrow for a woman, stuck in a beautiful place with only the internal horror show she can see in her mind. Louise Candlish paints picture after picture, seemingly effortlessly, with the minute details of person, place, thought and action which is what so captivates me as a reader. You can feel the emotions the characters experience and I felt bowed down by Ginny's despondency and lethargy.
The Sales are very different. Exuberant, excitable, and effusive, Marty is well-known for being a king of the fashion trade. His wife Bea has stood by him and helped build the clothing business as well as look after Esther, Dom and Pippi, their 3 children. But as the title implies, relationships within this family are not all they seem and the holiday has a way of bringing simmering emotions to the fore. The children are older teenagers, either at the start of or end of university years and it is Dom who is struggling the most to be in the luxuriousItalian villa.
Beautiful Bea has an agenda too and as temperatures soar and love interests develop we see how secrets, those long held and others more recent, combine to create an immensely enjoyable, immersive read.
I love it when I don't quite know what is going on. I love it when there is joy after huge loss and sadness, and I love it when people can find a way to begin again. Other People's Secrets has all these ingredients and as a Candlish fan I wolfed the lot down!
Help yourself to a hearty sized portion and discover how the two families are connected.

[Patrick Farley · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really loved Our House and Those People and was hoping for a similar experience with this book. Unfortunately despite the promise of the title and even the synopsis on the jacket, this book is not a well structured fast paced novel filled with brilliant suspense. It could be that, there is plenty of material to make the book dramatic: devastating loss, infidelity and lust. However, Candlish does not give the reader any reason to care about the secrets of the characters and as a result there is no suspense created by the characters motivations. This is one of Candlish's earlier books and came before she found success with the domestic suspense thriller genre. Instead it ends up reading as a somewhat trashy romance novel that also covers some pretty depressing topics. .... I have not given up on Candlish though I have The Other Passenger and The Swimming Pool on my to read list.

[Leah · Rating 3 out of 5]

After a devastating tragedy Ginny and Adam Trustlove head to the peaceful Lake Orta in Italy for two weeks in a bid to get their lives back on track. Their peace is shattered a mere 24 hours later though with the arrival of the enigmatic Sale family.

It doesn’t take long for Ginny and Adam to get caught up in the whirlwind that is the Sale’s life and when the youngest Sale, Pippi, brings a new friend into the fray, Zach, everyone finds themselves not knowing where they’re at and suddenly all kinds of secrets are spilling out. The trouble with telling secrets though is that, inevitably, new secrets end up being made. But what is it about Zach that makes everyone fall under his charm and loosen their tongues?

I have to admit that when I first picked up a book by Louise Candlish I wasn’t sure what to expect. In fact, I only picked it up because I needed to make up the books I was swapping. I didn’t expect to read Since I Don’t Have You but I didn’t know what else to read so I gave it a go. It turns out, that was probably one of the best buys I made as I absolutely loved the book and it’s one of my favourites. Since then I’ve eagerly bought up some of Louise’s other books and although I wasn’t a fan of her last book Before We Say Goodbye, I was still thrilled to receive her latest book Other People’s Secrets to review.

It’s fair to say that since her first book, Prickly Heat, Louise has gone from writing chick lit books to writing women’s fiction books. Her books no longer seem to revolve around the usual you find in chick lit books. There are no single twenty-somethings looking to find Mr Right (although since I haven’t read her debut, I can’t tell you if that’s what it’s about, but you get my point). Her books don’t have a love story, not the type you find in chick lit anyway and her books now seem to have a more serious tone. Because of the way her books are written, the pace isn’t as fast as I’m used to and I have to admit, it does take a while to get used to.

So with the slow pace in mind, there isn’t actually a lot that happens in Other People’s Secrets. Not really. Yes, as the title suggest, there are a lot of secrets floating around, but the main crux of the story centers on the Sale family, Ginny and Adam Trustlove and mysterious arrival of Zach. All of this takes place on the picturesque Lake Orta in Italy. The setting of the events for each of the characters is perfect. Because they’re all struggling with personal problems and tragedies and are trying to work out where they stand in life, the beautiful Lake Orta is a rather stunning backdrop. It sounds like such a wonderful place to go for a peaceful holiday and I could easily imagine the house within which the Sale family stayed, as well as the little boathouse where Ginny and Adam were staying. I’ve Googled some pictures and I would love to visit there one day as it sounds so lovely.

It’s hard for me to really say which characters I liked or disliked because with so many characters and so many different problems running throughout it’s hard to know what they’re really like. Because the book is only set around the holiday in Italy, Ginny and Adam spend the majority of their time being, understandably, sad. The tragedy they suffered really comes off the pages and I’ve never read a book with such characters suffering such horrible things. I will readily admit that it was mildly depressing, to see two characters trying to pull themselves together without completely falling apart was a bit hard to read because their grief seems so real. I found it hard to really get a handle on Ginny but she definitely evoked sympathy in me. Adam seemed to be coping a bit better and he didn’t seem like a nice character. The way he tried to help Ginny was admirable because although he was suffering, too, he knew he needed to help his wife also. The Sale’s on the other hand were a bit of an enigma, but they had a bit more of a sparkle. I really liked Bea Sale, the head of the family. She seemed like such a nice character. I wasn’t a huge fan of Marty, Bea’s husband. As for Bea and Marty’s children, the only one we really get to know is Pippi who was definitely the life and soul of the book. The final character pivotal to the story is Zach, the most mysterious of all. I had a few inklings about him, but nothing solid and I was a bit shocked by what we learn about him, however I did like him. He was probably my favourite character.

Louise is a fantastic writer, there’s absolutely no doubt about that. Most of the secrets that do come out are surprising. I kept trying to guess just what it was Dom was keeping hidden and I was stunned by what it was because I didn’t see it coming at all. I think the problem I had with the book was the pace. Which isn’t Louise’s problem at all, but I’m used to faster paced books and I did at times just want everyone to just spill the beans.The book is definitely aimed at the older market and I’m sure that Louise’s books are similar to Joanna Trollope’s books although I’ve never read any of Joanna’s books. I don’t like to place an age-range for books because, after all, any age (within reason) can read about people of any age and I’ve read many books with female characters older than me, but Other People’s Secrets did seem incredibly grown up and it was definitely out of my comfort zone and I’m not altogether sure it was my kind of book. I’m sure loads of people will love the book because it is well written, and I did stick with it throughout, but I don’t think it’s geared towards myself and that’s not Louise’s problem, not at all, but it did make it a difficult read for me.

[Manganet · Rating 1 out of 5]

DNF @ 32%

[Helen Watkins · Rating 3 out of 5]

Quite a good read a bit boring at first then it picked up a few surprises

[Cassie · Rating 1 out of 5]

I was sorry to dislike this book so much, because I had previously read The Double Life of Anna Day and found it very good, but this one simply wasn’t in quite the same ball park. This book was really boring. The secrets were so dull. Any real opportunities for conflict, of which there were a number, were glossed over and therefore the books kept bypassing chances to be interesting. It felt like a collection of unfinished ideas almost and certainly although there were difficult decisions and awful things that happened to the characters, everyone seemed to become inexplicably well adjusted even though they had just done something very dramatic previously. It was readable, which made it more frustrating when I realised that there was going to be no exciting twist to liven things up a bit. I think this author has probably written a few much better books and would recommend starting with those over this one!

[Helena Wildsmith · Rating 3 out of 5]

Just too slow for me - a lot of pages without a lot of story. The plot twist at the end was good but it wasn't worth waiting for.

[Fluffychick · Rating 2 out of 5]

The glamorous Sale family are holidaying in a luscious villa on Lake Orta. Their stylish and confident air disguise the underlying problems that are simply on hold as Marty, the charasmatic husband and father brings his family together for possibly the last time.
Ginny and Adam Trustlove are devastated by the tragic death of their baby son. Ginny has retreated from the world, whilst her husband is following the self-help and counselling route which creates further tensions as they try to cope with their grief by taking a peaceful holiday within the grounds of the Sale's villa.
I'm afraid I have to be pretty blunt about this one...sadly, not even the gorgeous setting of Lake Orta could redeem this book for me as it's just sooo gloomy. The whole thing takes place within a fortnight and has a very limited number of characters that you hardly get to know or care about and this makes it feel superficial and claustrophobic.
Firstly the Trustloves. Okay, so they're grieving, but they are mightily irritating. I can't really find anything else to say. The revelation at the end was unconvincing as I couldn't believe that Adam was sufficiently interesting to have any kind of sordid past!
The Sales are based on an idealised "Boden" family and the descriptions of the family business describes the company's catalogues and media coverage exactly. Bea is quietly perfect, Marty is dynamic and their three adult children are pretty thinly drawn. Dom is agonising throughout the book over something that I didn't want to know and didn't care when finally revealed. Esther (who was so redundant I couldn't remember her name) is beautiful and a lesbian but has no point to the plot and Pippi is an irritating, over indulged brat.
Bea quickly reveals that Marty is a serial adulterer and now the children have grown up it's time for her to move on. The whole mix is stirred up by Zach who arrives in the town and is quickly leapt upon by Pippi, who fancies him as a romantic diversion. Zach and the Trustloves are quickly drawn into the Sales' circle and tensions and subterfuge take over.
I usually love books set in Italy, but this could be taking place anywhere...there's little description of the lake (apart from it being cold and Ginny quickly gets fed up of visiting churches) and so not even that made me interested in going on. It was too cold, removed and depressing for me to enjoy. Sorry

[Anne · Rating 5 out of 5]

'Other People's Secret's' really is the perfect summer read, set in the Italian lakes and comprising of a small cast of very well drawn characters, it pulls the reader in from page one.

Ginny and Adam Trustlove are at the lakes to try and get over a terrible tragedy that is almost killing their marriage - their holiday neighbours, the wealthy, loud Sale family are having what is probably going to be their last family holiday together.

And, then there is Zach, a mysterious stranger who Pippi Sale befriends and introduces to the group - Zach soon becomes a central figure and his presence really will change lives.

Louise Candlish deals with some difficult subjects include adultery, abortion, a dying child yet this story is not all doom and gloom, it is brilliantly written with some exceptionally good female characters. This is a very clever story, the 'secrets' of the title are never far away, always present in the plot but not revealed straight away. Once those secrets are revealed, the reader starts to re-assess the characters, to see why they behave like they do and sometimes change opinions.

Thought-provoking and emotional, yet quite an easy read. A story about family, but especially about the parent-child relationship.

Another cracker from Louise Candlish that I'd recommend.

[Nicki · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was a page turner, but couldn't honestly say I loved it.
Well written story with a few mysteries which don't really pay off by the end. Is it just me, or did it seem like there was something more to the Ginny story than just a lost baby. It was really written like she was going to turn out to have a terminal illness herself and that kept me reading well past the sad sack stuff to see what was actually wrong with her. Nothing as it happens.
The Dom revelation p'd me off. I do give points to the author for keeping that one level by Bea's fairness in that situation of thinking how it would feel if it was Pippi.
Speaking of Pippi, what an entitled spoiled brat.
Adam was dull. The lesbian sister, whose name eludes me, is barely in the book except to remind us that she is, indeed, a lesbian.
I don't know. Meh. I enjoyed reading it, but the payoff at the end wasn't there. And in all fairness, if the Ginny storyline was hinted at on the back, I wouldn't have bothered at all, so as usual, I am the wrong target audience for this type of thing.

[Sandra · Rating 1 out of 5]

It's not often I abandon a book half way through but I gave up on this one.

Just a big nothing story No endearing or interesting characters and quite honestly I'm not prepared to waste any more time waiting to find out the big secret.

[Tanya Fife · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fabulous, thought provoking. Ending wasn't what I expected, a little disappointing, but definitely worth reading!!

[Natalie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I admit I didn't find this book as good as her others, and I am a big fan of Louise Candlish normally. This felt difficult to get into a long winded when it didn't need to be.

This is a story of a couple Ginny and Adam going on holiday to a lake in Italy to get over a tragedy that's just occurred in their family. They are staying in a small house at the lake edge in the same grounds as a huge villa at the top of the hill. They end up becoming aqauinted with the family holidaying in the large villa, the Sales.

The Sales are very well off, own their own clothing business and are a very nice family. The chapters were set out with a chapter for each family/environment. The Sales, Bea and Husband Martin, and children Dom, Pippi and Esther. Ginny first comes across Dom and Bea chatting in the bushes when Ginny is having some time out, and ends up disturbing their conversation and consequently overhearing. Pippi goes into the town and meets a traveller, Zach. They quickly become friends and Pippi invites him to the villa. The family are so hospitable, after getting to know Zach a little they invite him to stay as he is a lone traveller and otherwise staying in a hotel by himself, he says just travelling...

The story progresses with everyone spending time with each other, Pippi finding Zach very attractive and wanting to persue a relationship with him, meanwhile someone else catches Zach's attention and eventually Zach has to admit that he is not interested. Dom is a troubled young man and Bea knows the reason why, but it takes a long time for the story to come out why Dom is so troubled, and the story is related to Ginny and Adam, which causes conflicts. Bea and Martin have a troubled relationship, with Bea wanting to get a divorce and only came on the holiday for the sake of the children with plans to end the marriage once they get home, due to Martin's infidelity throughout their marriage.

Nothing was very gripping or no twists, just little dramas here and there, until the last couple of chapters when we find out who Zach really is and why he is there. It was fine, an OK read but not anything majorly exciting like most of her previous books I have read.

[Eyejaybee · Rating 3 out of 5]

Having never been aware of her until fairly recently, I have now read a few books by Louise Candlish this year. She has a great knack of relating a story from different, even conflicting, perspectives, and of identifying fragilities and tensions within relationships. I have found that she is also adept at creating a wide cast of characters who are all difficult to like, without making the reader reluctant to continue.

This book focuses on two families who end up in close proximity to each other on holiday in the Italian lakes. Adam and Ginny Trustlove, who have booked the lodge house for a large villa estate, are hoping that some time away will help them cope with a resent personal tragedy. Meanwhile the wealthy Sale family, owners of a multinational clothing franchise, have taken the villa itself. As the book progresses it becomes clear that all of the characters have their own deep secrets, and related vulnerabilities, and as the family groups become closer, these sensitivities are probed.

This is one of Candlish’s earlier books, and while there are some familiar aspects, it is clear that she had not yet honed her skills to the pitch shown in later works sauch as ‘The Other Passenger’ and ‘Our House’. That is not to say that it is not a good book – it is, and I enjoyed reading it. There were slightly fewer surprises than in the more recent novels, but she builds the tension very effectively.