Leonora is a reclusive writer, who has had some form of trauma as a child, causing her to sever all connections with old friends, except for Nina. Now, ten years later, Nora (as she choses to call herself now) gets an invite to Clare’s hen-do, in a remote isolated glass house deep in the woods. As the various tedious and often ridiculous events of the hen-do progress, Clare is convinced that they are not alone in the glass house, and there is someone else around. Footsteps in the snow, missing phones, inexplicably open doors… until some intruder is fired upon with a gun.
A sequence of events unfolds which culminates with Nora in hospital, being a suspect in the death of James, and police questioning her. As Nora gradually remembers the sequence of events, she realizes that someone at the hen-do had more sinister motives. The intruder was James, Clare’s fiance and Nora’s ex-boyfriend, who dumped Nora as a teen when she got pregnant. But why was he there at the glass house, and why are there texts from her mobile to his, inviting him over? Nora escapes the hospital to find out just that.
The story builds like a intruiging mystery, but the ending is decidedly unsatisfactory. Clare, it turns out, is extremely narcissistic and manipulative. She had caused the break-up between James and Nora back in the day, and when James finds out, demands that she make amends under threat of breaking up. Clare is unwilling to either make amends, or face the ignominy of being dumped. So she decides that the best course of action would be to murder James and frame Nora for it. To this end, she texts James from Nora’s phone, and invites him over, while replacing the blank cartridges in the shotgun with live ones.
There is no logical explanation for Clare’s motives. I mean, she was a teenager, who pulled a nasty prank. But rather than make amends, she decides that her fiance must die? There would be signs that someone is this twisted. She would not have been capable of forming normal relationships, or keep up the pretense of being an empathetic human being so consistently to all circles. Quite frankly, she is rather poorly written, and the plot seems decidedly weak as a result.
Moreover, in a classic case of the cavalry coming in once the battle is over, the police posse pieces everything together and figures out that Clare is the culprit shortly after she nearly takes Nora out, again. Clare is supposedly fighting for her life in hospital, but she is more concerned with being unmasked? The ending had me rolling eyes.
That’s Clare. But every character in this book is ridiculous to varying degrees. Nora was dumped (or, thought she was) ten years ago. She is now a functioning adult, but cannot form relationships because of something that happened when she was a teen? Flo, on the other hand, is not a functioning adult.
And really, who has bachelor parties or hen-do’s lasting days? A dinner with drinks and get back home. The whole premise is ridiculous.