Rating: 4.5 / 5
Some thrillers grip you with pace. This one grips you with people — and then pulls the floor out from under them.
What it’s about (no spoilers)
Jen Miller leaves her youngest child in the care of her two sisters while the family gathers at superstar Winter Kellaway’s beachside estate for a wedding celebration. The champagne is on ice, the decorations are flawless — and one split-second lapse turns the happiest day of the year into a tragedy the family will never recover from. What follows is grief, blame, an explosive court case, and a long-buried secret that refuses to stay buried. DC Saul Anguish is brought in to investigate.
What I loved
The twists. Plural. Every time I thought I had it worked out, Cummins shifted the ground and I was wrong again — and not in a cheap, out-of-nowhere way. The clues are there; you just don’t see them until she wants you to.
The sisters are the real engine of the book. Winter, Jen and Alyssa are so believably written that the fallout hurts, and the shifting timelines and viewpoints mean you’re constantly re-weighing who deserves your sympathy. That’s the clever bit: your loyalties keep moving.
It’s also genuinely emotional. This isn’t just a puzzle to solve — it’s about guilt, forgiveness and how far people will go to protect the ones they love. I read most of it in two sittings because I simply couldn’t leave it alone.
What didn’t quite work
My one real gripe is the subplot involving Saul. I never felt it earned its place. Every time the story cut back to him I found myself wanting to get back to the sisters, and I don’t think losing those sections would have cost the book anything — if anything the central story would have hit even harder. It’s not badly written, it just sits slightly apart from everything that makes the novel so compelling. Half a star off for that.
The verdict
A dark, twisty, surprisingly moving thriller with characters you’ll be arguing about long after the last page. If you like Lisa Jewell or Claire Douglas, or you enjoy a courtroom thread running through your crime fiction, you’ll fly through this one. It was also shortlisted for the CWA Twisted Dagger 2026.
4.5 out of 5 — highly recommended.
You can buy the book here
Have you read it? Did you guess the twist? Tell me in the comments — and let me know if you agree with me about Saul.
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