Book review – The Poison Tree by Erin Kelly

Karen is at university in London in the 90s – but she is anything but your typical uni student! She shares a house with four other girls and they are all very sensible, with steady boyfriends, playing tennis at the weekends and doing nothing more rebellious than sharing a bottle of white over their homecooked meals.
But then Karen meets Biba – a beautiful, carefree aspiring actress, and Karen finds herself sucked into Biba’s world which is so unlike her own. She spends the summer living in Biba’s rambling Highgate home with an assortment of characters including Biba’s over-protective brother Rex.

Karen narrates the story, and the action flits from the summer with Biba, to ten years in the future. We know from the blurb on the back that the summer ended in a double murder, so of course we spend the majority of the book trying to work out who the victims may have been!

This was a very well written book, and as with all good thrillers you really want to read on to work out what has happened, and as the book progresses we piece together what happened all those years ago at the house in Highgate. We are sucked into Biba’s world and learn a lot about the characters, and I could really see how Karen would find herself in the same position as the reader- fascinated by the exciting life of her glamorous new friend.

I think one of the problems I had with this book – and other books of this nature – is you spend the whole book trying to figure out what has happened and, in this case, who has been murdered, that by the time you do find out it doesn’t come as a shock at all. There is also another twist at the end that I did see coming, so again this took the edge off it a bit for me.

However overall I really enjoyed this book. It is an intriguing read and it is all cleverly put together. I would definitely check out more from Erin Kelly.

My rating: 7 out of 10