I should have known better, reading a thriller at night with unreliable narrators and creepy insinuations of how cold and calculating people can be, but I finished Louis Candlish’s Our House at midnight, precluding restful sleep last night.  This new version of Gone Girl includes distracting comments from a twitter-like audience.

Coming back from a long weekend early, Fi finds someone moving into her posh London house.  All her furniture and belongings are gone, the new couple have proof of purchase, and her husband is missing.  This compelling premise then reverts to a he-said/she-said tale of marital infidelity, identify theft, hit and run car crash, and murder with a Greek chorus chiming in periodically.  Although the story is a page turner, many of the twists are hard to swallow.  

Fi and her handsome philandering husband, Bram, separate after she finds him in bed with another woman.  They decide to keep the house for the sake of the children, as well as the increasing equity in the neighborhood.  She stays in the house all week, while he sleeps at a small apartment nearby; on weekends they switch.  To add to the drama, he has lost his driver’s license but drives anyway.  He gets caught in a road rage incident while he is driving drunk and without a license, causing the death of a ten year old girl.

But there is more – the plot twists when a vile witness who helped cause the accident, Mike, decides to blackmail Bram.  Candlish continues to add surprises as the plot develops, and the ending gives everyone their just punishment in an unexpected climax.

I now need a soothing book to cleanse my poor mind from the taste of horrible people.  I found an NPR review of Anne Youngson’s Meet Me at the Museum, and will be reading it tonight – hoping for a more peaceful sleep.