Title: A Game for All the Family

Author: Sophie Hannah

Type: Fiction

Page Count/Review Word Count: 426

Rating: 3.5/5

I’ve read a little bit of Sophie Hannah before because she’s the author who was chosen by the Agatha Christie estate to write some new Hercule Poirot novels. It’s basically the same arrangement that Anthony Horowitz has with whoever owns the copyright to Sherlock Holmes. But that’s all I’m going to say about that, because this is her own original stuff and to focus on the Christie connection would be to do her a disservice.

Because it turns out that she’s super successful, winning awards both for her crime novels and her poetry. And having read this book, I have to say that I can see why. She’s a talented writer, and she does a great job with both plot and characterisation, bringing the two together into a pretty gripping read.

Sure, it does have the same problem that pretty much every thriller has, which is that once you’ve read one, you’ve kind of read them all. Don’t let that put you off though, because it’s a particularly good example of the genre, and I was pleasantly surprised by how engaging I found it and how long it held my attention.

I think it’s a pretty good start for my exploration into Hannah’s back catalogue, and it certainly gives me positive vibes about what I’ve got coming up, considering that I bought a job lot of Sophie Hannah’s books. If this one sucked then I’d be wondering what I’d got myself into. As it is, I was pretty pleased, and I’m further excited by the fact that I know she has a series for me to read.

It’s also one of those where even though I didn’t necessarily relate to the characters or the family setup that they had, I also didn’t think it was badly done. They were a believable family, they just didn’t look much like my own family unit, which basically consists of me and my cat. There was some pretty interesting stuff going on with the plot as well, to the point at which it hooks you in and makes you wonder what the score is.

All in all then, you can probably tell that I enjoyed this one, and I’d recommend it if you’re into thrillers and stories about families where weird stuff is going on. It’ll keep you guessing to the end and even creep you out a little bit. Have fun!

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