Elodie was beautiful. Elodie was smart. Elodie was manipulative. Elodie is dead.
When Sylvie Durand receives a letter calling her back to her crumbling family home in the South of France, she knows she has to go. In the middle of a sweltering 1990’s summer marked by unusual fires across the countryside, she returns to La Reverie with her youngest daughter Emma in tow, ignoring the deep sense of dread she feels for this place she’s long tried to forget.
As memories of the events that shattered their family a decade earlier threaten to come to the surface, Sylvie struggles to shield Emma from the truth of what really happened all those years ago. In every corner of the house, Sylvie can’t escape the specter of Elodie, her first child. Elodie, born amid the ’68 Paris riots with one blue eye and one brown, and mysteriously dead by fourteen. Elodie, who reminded the small village of one those Manson girls. Elodie who knew exactly how to get what she wanted. As the fires creep towards the villa, it’s clear to Sylvie that something isn’t quite right at La Reverie . . . And there is a much greater threat closer to home.
The Review
THE HEATWAVE by Kate Riordan
Elodie was different.
They said she wasn’t like everyone else. She didn’t think the same. She manipulated people. And when they said all of this, they said it to Sylvie’s face. The one that looked so much like her.
I really enjoyed this visit to an eerie family home in the South of France. I thought it had just the right amount of suspense and mysterious elements.
The setting was perfect and I found it to be almost its own character. It was interwoven in dialogue and expressed through characterizing humans and inert objects. The setting was probably my favorite part.
I also found it super interesting to get a fictional take on how a child like this or an experience like this with motherhood might be perceived in a different country.
This would make for excellent last days of summer escape in the form of a book.
Available now!
Thanks to Netgalley and Grand Central Publishing for the advanced copy!
THE HEATWAVE…⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
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