by Jenny Quintana
SYNOPSIS Some houses have their secrets. But so do some people…
From Jenny Quintana, the bestselling author of The Missing Girl and Our Dark Secret, comes The Hiding Place: a story about identity, love, long-buried secrets and lies.
Marina is adopted. She’s always known this – but the circumstances of her birth remain a mystery. Baby Blue, the newspapers nicknamed her at the time, after she’d been found wrapped in a blue shawl, in the hallway of a large, shared house in London.
24 Harrington Gardens. That was the house. And it’s still standing now Marina is an adult; still split into flats. And one of them is to let… Of course, Marina knows that the chances of her uncovering the truth about her birth are remote – but she hopes the house might hold some clues.
What it it’s not just the house, though? What if someone connected to it knows what really happened that day? Someone who doesn’t want the truth to come to light?
REVIEW
The Hiding Place is a completely different type of mystery novel. Split between the 1960's and 1990's, Marina tries to uncover the secrets behind her birth and why she was abandoned in the hallway of a shared house in 1964. She returns to the house, hoping to trace some of the previous tenants and uncover the secrets that have haunted her since finding out that she was adopted.
This book was definitely a slow-burn rather than an edge of your seat thriller, but after reading several heavy psychological thrillers recently, it was exactly what I wanted to read for a change of pace. The mix of characters, both past and present, were really interesting and carried the story for me, keeping my interest the whole way through. In a way, it was kind of like a more sinister episode of 'Long Lost Family' (which is not usually the type of thriller I would lean towards), but the amount of detail, and the way the two timelines were woven together, made it a really gripping read.
The Hiding Place is perfect for fans of The Glass House by Eve Chase and for anyone who likes a good mystery, but prefers a bit less gore! An intriguing story which had me completely invested in Marina and her secret family history - right up until the last moment and the heart-wrenching end reveal.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jenny Quintana grew up in Essex and Berkshire before studying English Literature in London. She has taught in London, Seville and Athens. Her first novel, The Missing Girl was published in 2017 and chosen as a Waterstones thriller of the month. Our Dark Secret, her second novel, was published in 2020. She now lives with her family in Berkshire.
Thanks to @RandomTTours, @MantleBooks, @panmacmillan and @jennyquintana95 for the opportunity to read and review.
Fiction: Thriller / Mystery
Product format: Hardback
ISBN: 978-1529040401
Pages: 320 pp
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