📖 Book Review ~ We Begin at the End by Chris Whitaker

 

Zaffre
2020

Right. Wrong. Life is lived somewhere in between.

Duchess Day Radley is a thirteen-year-old self-proclaimed outlaw. Rules are for other people. She is the fierce protector of her five-year-old brother, Robin, and the parent to her mother, Star, a single mom incapable of taking care of herself, let alone her two kids.

Walk has never left the coastal California town where he and Star grew up. He may have become the chief of police, but he’s still trying to heal the old wound of having given the testimony that sent his best friend, Vincent King, to prison decades before. And he's in overdrive protecting Duchess and her brother.

Now, thirty years later, Vincent is being released. And Duchess and Walk must face the trouble that comes with his return. We Begin at the End is an extraordinary novel about two kinds of families—the ones we are born into and the ones we create.

📖 My Review

Sometimes I finish a story and think, wow, I wish I’d written this one and even though I’m really late to the party, I can’t recommend We Begin at the End highly enough. By the end of the first chapter I was hooked on a story which had such a visceral pull that I couldn’t let go of the plot or get the characters out of my head.

Duchess Day Radley is thirteen years old, and considers herself an outlaw, she is also the protector of both her younger brother, Robin, and Star, her troubled and misguided mother. With little money and no parental guidance Duchess is fiercely independent and doesn’t take any nonsense from people with the exception of Walk, who is a family friend and also the chief of police. After serving a thirty year prison sentence, local man, Vincent Hall is released back into the Cape Haven community, tensions are running high, particularly for Star Radley and her children.

Duchess is now one of my all time favourite characters and We Begin at the End is up there with the best of any thriller I’ve read in a long time. It’s quite an extraordinary story, effortless and pieced together so carefully, with characters who are so flawed that you can’t help but connect with them on an emotional level. There is a constant sense of doom running throughout the story and whilst I anticipated that things were never going to work out neatly,  I was constantly surprised by the cleverness of the twists and turns, with some genuine surprises I really didn’t see coming. The writing is sharp and concise. beautifully controlled with no words wasted, or emotion unexpressed. It both broke my heart and angered me at the same time. 

Flipping between the enclosed small town atmosphere of Cape Haven, California and the wide open skies of Montana, this complex drama is really difficult to sum up without giving away huge spoilers and I won’t do that as it would be a terrible disservice to a story which wraps itself around you, biting deep into your heart and leaving you bereft when it finishes.

The author has a new book, All the Colours of the Dark which was published in June. It’s already on my radar of books to read as I’ve heard that it’s another masterclass in thriller writing. Watch this space…

About the Author

Chris Whitaker is the award-winning author of Tall Oaks, All the Wicked Girls, We Begin at the End, and The Forevers (YA). His debut Tall Oaks won the CWA John Creasey New Blood Dagger Award.

An instant New York Times and international bestseller, We Begin at the End was a Waterstones Thriller of the Month, a Barnes & Noble Book Club Pick and a Good Morning America Buzz Pick. The novel won the CWA Gold Dagger Award, the Theakston Crime Novel of the Year, the Ned Kelly International Award, and numerous awards around the world.

We Begin At The End has been translated into twenty-nine languages, with screen rights going to Disney, where ‘Hamilton’ director Thomas Kail and producing partner Jennifer Todd will develop the book for television.

Chris lives in the UK.

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