Review | The Birdcage

by Eve Chase

Published : 28th April 2022

Publisher : PenguinRandomHouse

Format : Kindle, Audio, Hardback, Paperback

Genre : Mystery

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Synopsis

Lauren, Kat and Flora are half-sisters who share a famous artist father - and a terrible secret.

After years of drifting apart, they are unexpectedly summoned to Rock Point, the cliff house where they once sat for their father's most celebrated painting, Girls and Birdcage.

Rock Point is a beautiful, windswept place, thick with secrets and electrically charged with the catastrophic events of a summer twenty years before. The day of the total solar eclipse.

It's the first time they've dared return.

When the sisters arrive, it is clear that someone is determined not to let the past lie. Someone who is watching their every move. Who remembers the girls in the painting, and what they did . . .

My Review

I really enjoyed this read. It is my second by this author and I devoured it literally in one sitting!

The Birdcage is a slow-burning family drama based around three half-sisters who all share the same father. All three sisters are completely different and their father is an eccentric self absorbed artist. I loved the way all of the three sisters' characters drew me in, all sharing the same half DNA of their father and all reluctantly drawn back to the place where they all last were together for a painting where they left behind secrets they longed to forget.

We have three narratives, alternating between the sisters in 2019 and also a first-person narrative from Lauren going back in the past to 1999.

The pace of the story is perfectly written and I really felt absorbed into the family’s lies and secrets. The mystery surrounding this entire novel is so cleverly weaved, subtly dropping little droplets of suspense leaving me constantly wondering what was going on and I didn’t see the brilliant twist coming at the end!

The backdrop of an isolated manor set in the beautiful windswept Cornwall worked really well, Eve didn’t just tell us her story but showed us the scene, which made me feel like I was walking through the rooms of this crumbling Manor House and standing on the brutal Cornwall cliff edge with moorlands all around and odd little cottages dotted about here and there.

Details that gradually unfolded allowed me to truly lose myself in this spellbinding mystery read.

Thank you @penguinrandomhouse for this beautiful copy and your Blogspot.

Q. Have you read any Eve Chase before ? If so, which one?