The day Adam Dunne's girlfriend, Sarah, fails to return from a Barcelona business trip, his perfect life begins to fall apart. Days later, the arrival of her passport and a note that reads 'I'm sorry - S' sets off real alarm bells. He vows to do whatever it takes to find her.
Adam is puzzled when he connects Sarah to a cruise ship called the Celebrate - and to a woman, Estelle, who disappeared from the same ship in eerily similar circumstances almost exactly a year before. To get the answers, Adam must confront some difficult truths about his relationship with Sarah. He must do things of which he never thought himself capable. And he must try to outwit a predator who seems to have found the perfect hunting ground...
I've a confession to make in so much as I actually read Distress Signals last year but due to illness and other factors the review got overlooked until now when I decided to include as part of this month's informal Irish Fiction feature. I'd been looking forward to reading Distress Signals ever since I featured Catherine Ryan Howard in a debut spotlight on the blog last year. the book sounded right up my street and I certainly wasn't disappointed once I finally found the time to read it.
Adam and Sarah are your typical young couple who have stuck together through thick and thin whilst he was a struggling screenwriter and she was the one paying the bills, but things are about to change as Adam has finally hit the big time and has been offered a big Hollywood deal. Whilst Adam is busy at home finishing writing drafts, Sarah has to go away to Barcelona on a work trip for a few days but they can celebrate his big success on her return. But Adam and Sarah's parents soon start to worry when they don't hear from her and she doesn't return home when expected as it's totally out of character for her, what has happened to her?
The premise of this book really intrigued me as it's true what they say that sometimes people are not who they seem and that certainly appeared to be true about Sarah once Adam and the police start to investigate why she has not returned home. She certainly hadn't been telling the whole truth about her trip abroad but even so it certainly looked like there was something more sinister at play here about her whole disappearance. Will they ever discover the truth?
Well Adam is certainly determined to do so, especially when the police decide that they don't think she's a missing person, so he takes matters into his own hands and decides to retrace her steps even if it could uncover secrets about Sarah that he'd rather not know. Although the main focus of Distress Signals is about Adam's search for the truth, there are also a couple of other narratives alongside his story which added to the drama and intrigue as we got to know these characters a little more and their thoughts and worked out how they fit into Sarah's story.
Once I started reading Distress Signals I literally could not stop reading, it was definitely one of those 'just one more chapter' type of reads and before you know it you're halfway through the book and are hooked. It's hard to believe that this is the author's debut thriller as her skilled writing certainly pulls you in wanting to know what's going to happen next so I'm definitely looking forward to reading more books by her in the future and hopefully won't have too long to wait for news of her next novel which should be out later this year.
I'd like to thank Alison at Corvus for sending me a copy of Distress Signals to review. Earlier this year I was sent a paperback copy of Distress Signals but as I already had a trade paperback and ecopy of Distress Signals I put it aside to use for a future giveaway prize, that time is now as part of this Irish Fiction feature during March.
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Although I'm not a fan of old weather, I'd love to cruise around the fjords of Norway as I believe they're spectacular
ReplyDeleteI'd love a northern lights cruise, although I was very seasick the last cruise I went on!
ReplyDeleteI would want to go somewhere hot and exotic.
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