Review: Here To Stay by Mark Edwards @mredwards #HereToStay #BookReview

A beautiful home. A loving wife. And in-laws to die for.

Gemma Robinson comes into Elliot’s life like a whirlwind, and they marry and settle into his home. When she asks him if her parents can come to stay for a couple of weeks, he is keen to oblige – he just doesn’t quite know what he’s signing up for.

The Robinsons arrive with Gemma’s sister, Chloe, a mysterious young woman who refuses to speak or leave her room. Elliot starts to suspect that the Robinsons are hiding a dark secret. And then there are the scars on his wife’s body that she won’t talk about . . .

As Elliot’s in-laws become more comfortable in his home, encroaching on all aspects of his life, it becomes clear that they have no intention of moving out. To protect Gemma, and their marriage, Elliot delves into the Robinsons’ past. But is he prepared for the truth?

I love the blogging community, I love the book recommendations and the sharing of bookish thoughts. I also really love it when someone who reviews brilliantly finally takes the leap and sets up their own book blog. This happened last week, fellow book lover and Twitterer Brian @BCallar67 started his own book blog called ‘Barking Mad Book Blog’. His first review was of Mark Edwards upcoming June release The House Guest, you can check it out here! Well, after reading this review, I decided to take a leap on the Mark train and try out his most previous thriller Here To Stay and if you take anything away from this, it should be that Brian gives excellent book recommendations AND you need to read Mark’s books!

Here To Stay is novel that opens with a whirlwind romance, one that gets turned upside and dark pretty quickly when the in-laws from hell arrive with no plans to leave. The unsettling eeriness floats into the plotline quietly, like fog in the night – it begins so subtly but yet it immediately grasps the reader into thinking something is not quite right. The Robinsons are a bunch and a half, they’re clever, tactical and quite possibly the most evil of characters, I found myself whispering a number of swear words while reading, but my gosh did I love their presence. The concoction of suspense, tension and first person narrative had me hooked from the get go. With the inclusion of flashbacks, a picture was created of the family before arriving at Elliot’s home, this provided the characters with further depth, as well as opening the thrilling story up a crack that kept me , the reader, needing more. Who were these in-laws? What brought them here? Will they ever leave? In every novel where evil lurks, we also have ‘the good guy’, poor Elliot is in quite the conundrum, he loves his wife but all he wants is his home back, instead his world as he knows it crumbles and you can’t help but sympathise with him.
I started this book at 11:30pm, stayed up way past my bedtime and had to fight with myself to put the book down, Mark is a talent! His attention to detail, as well as his ability to create the right level of chilling menace, left me a gasping mess – and you can bet that I went back to purchase another book from his back catalogue, as well as pre-order his upcoming thriller.

So there you have it