Greenwich Park by Katherine Faulkner comes recommended by many of my favourite thriller writers. In fact quotes take up the entire back cover so I didn’t read the blurb before diving in. I’m assuming I did so before requesting it, but that was probably a few months ago.

I was worried then when the book opened with a fertility-challenged woman (Helen) who’s seven months pregnant. At her first antenatal class she meets a snarky young woman (Rachel) who quickly insinuates herself into Helen’s world. I imagined several tropes that have been done-to-death: the single-white-female thing with Rachel coveting Helen’s life; Rachel faking a pregnancy for nefarious reasons; or Rachel seeking revenge for a long past deed.

However, though this novel touches on a couple of those scenarios, Faulkner takes us in an unexpected direction. So, although it seems obvious where our suspicion and mistrust should lie, there are some twists which kept me turning page after page, keen to see where we’d be taken.