The Family Holiday - Shalini Boland

Author: Shalini Boland

Genre: Domestic Thriller.

Rating: 2.75 stars.

In a Nutshell: I’ve never read this author’s works before but having heard so much about her, I somehow expected more. It’s a decent one-time read but I can’t call it a must-read. For a regular thriller reader, it will be highly predictable.

Story:

A WARNING FIRST: DON’T READ THE GOODREADS BLURB!!!!!

Two couples – Niall and Beth Kildare (from Dorset, UK), and Renzo and Amber Mason (British expats now residing on the Amalfi Coast in Italy) decide to house swap for a vacation. (Don’t get me started on the idea of house swaps!) When the Kildares arrive in Italy, their vacation starts off decently but soon devolves into a nightmare.

The story comes to us in the first person perspectives of Amber and Beth, and a third mysterious character whose brief and random interludes add a level of creepiness to the narrative.

Where the book worked for me:

👌 It went by pretty fast. I completed it within a day. (Not bad for a 240 page novel.)

👌 I loved one of the secondary characters, Luciana. She seemed to be the only sensible one among all adults who have a major role to play in the plot.

👌 The book has multiple epilogues, the final epilogue is the best one. It is also the only part of the book that surprised me.

Where the book could have worked better for me:

❌ That has got to be one of the worst blurbs I have ever read in my life. Who the heck would put such a major spoiler in a blurb – and that too, one of the few surprises in the book! The said character doesn’t die until the 72% mark.

❌ The cover has zero connection to the plot. Of the six children in the book, five are boys. The only girl doesn't have any scenes near even a swimming pool, forget about the open ocean.

❌ In a thriller, you always enjoy better if you feel the shock or pain of what a character is going through. And for this, you need to love, or at least like the characters. Of Beth, Niall, Amber and Renzo, not one of them created even a minor stirring of positive feeling in me. Beth was a spineless, hyper-agitated rambler who let everyone treat her like a doormat. Amber was a selfish b***h of the highest order. Renzo was too good to be true, thereby making it very clear that there was something fishy underneath that goody-goody façade. Niall was the worst of the lot, a control freak with his constant mental abuse and gaslighting of Beth. Thus, whenever anything bad happened to any of them, and especially to Niall, I felt more of satisfaction than sympathy for them.

❌ I'm so fed up of characters' phones dying out on them at crucial points in thrillers. Why can't anyone in the fictional world be more practical about charging their phones?

❌ There's a fair amount of repetition in the writing. This wasn’t something I had expected from an established writer.

❌ The story is quite predictable with very few major twists. Most are guessable as the shadiness in certain characters is made amply clear right from the start.

❌ There are too many coincidences. The silliest one was that Beth resembles Amber, and Niall resembles Renzo. *eye roll*

❌ The climax of the book (before the epilogues) is a damp squib. Maybe I should call it an "anti-climax” for that word suits it better. It’s over within a few paragraphs..

As I mentioned, this was my very first Shalini Boland thriller. So I have no idea of her general writing style. I might try a couple of books more by her before I decide if she is for me or not. But I have a feeling this book might not be liked except by the most ardent of her fans. That said, this book is highly rated on Goodreads, so yet again, I stand as an outlier. Please go through the other reviews before you make up your mind on this thriller.

My thanks to Bookouture and NetGalley for the DRC of “The Family Holiday”. This review is voluntary and contains my honest opinion about the book.