Of course, I know Nalini Singh’s name. She’s written over fifty books, and I ordered them all the time for the library. There Should Have Been Eight is the first I’ve read. Think Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None, set in New Zealand’s Southern Alps. How many authors write an homage to this mystery by Christie?
Nine years after her younger sister, Bea, died, Darcie invites their six college friends to a reunion at the family estate in New Zealand’s Southern Alps. All of them had been close at one time, but photographer and narrator Luna Wylie knows that Bea’s suicide set them all adrift. Luna is filled with rage for several reasons. She blames Darcie for cremating Bea, the light of their circle. No one had a chance to say goodbye. But, Luna is also losing her eyesight to a hereditary disease. She hasn’t told anyone, and she hasn’t yet admitted it to herself, a year after she was diagnosed.
The Shepherd estate isn’t what anyone expected. It’s a remote house straight out of a gothic romance, reachable only over a bridge. It’s the perfect place to tell ghost stories and remember the past. But, all seven of the people who return for the reunion, along with Aaron’s girlfriend, Grace, have secrets. Even nine years after Darcie received news of her sister’s death, the missing Bea is still the center of their universe.
Of course, this is a gothic thriller. The group is cut off from the world with no cell coverage and no way to get out after a spring snowstorm. Strange events occur, from a haunting doll that once belonged to Bea to mysterious accidents. People unfamiliar with Christie’s story might not foresee the accidents and violent happenings. To anyone familiar with similar thrillers, the events and the conclusion are not unexpected.
While Singh’s gothic story was fast-moving, I really just found the story adequate with characters suitable for the the mystery. However, even the narrator was flawed and not very appealing. There Should Have Been Eight might appeal to those who aren’t familiar with Christie’s trope; a group of people are lured to a remote location, find themselves trapped, people start dying, and secrets are revealed.
Nalini Singh’s website is https://nalinisingh.com/
There Should Have Been Eight by Nalini Singh. Berkley, 2023. ISBN 9780593549766 (hardcover), 416p.
FTC Full Disclosure – I received a galley through NetGalley to review for a journal.
Lesa you had me wondering why I couldn’t claim the know the name of this successful novelist. Ah, genre of course! I don’t think that I’ve ever ventured into “paranormal romance novels”. I did add her previous mystery, Quiet In Her Bones, to my TBR.
Yes, genre, MM. I don’t read her paranormal romances, either.
I’m listening to this now on Audible, so thanks for the review! Yeah, I think it’s interesting, the influx of unappealing narrators after Girl on the Train. I think it’s because Singh is writing in the thriller genre where that is more expected. It’s partly why I’ll never be a full thriller reader. I tried to read Lucy Foley and came across the same thing, the plot was moved along by Unlikable Character A with a Secret Doing Shocking Thing 1, and so on. But this book, I’m finding so far, it’s not enough like Christies’s island mystery 😀 it is moving super slow for me, weighed down with a lot of description of the environment and mansion! But that is one of the reasons I picked it up: I love international mysteries and I’ve always been interested in NZ. So I’m looking forward to the first murder . . . I think the point of contemporary thrillers is to give the audience a joy by killing off the worst examples of humanity. And I guess there are unlikable people anywhere, even in NZ with a diverse millennial cast with very hip names like “Ash” and “Phoenix.” 😀
I’m just not a fan of the unappealing narrator and cast, Becky. Kill them all off! I’m reading one now in which 10 people connected to a massacre 20 years earlier reunite. Why? Why would anyone be stupid enough to go there? Setting yourself up for a horror movie.
Omg I know. There’s an early step in the writing process that goes something like “is the premise probable?” For the sake of selling, I think this step is often ignored!
I agree, Becky!
“Kill them all!”
Well put. I totally agree with you. First, Christie did it so well that if you have the conceit of – basically – “borrowing” her premise (granted, it had been done earlier, with THE INVISIBLE HOST/aka THE NINTH GUEST by Gwen Bristow & Bruce Manning strikingly similar and predating the Christie by almost a decade), you better have something new and interesting to say, or at least characters we care about enough to read all the way through.
My advice: if you’ve read the Christie and want to read a variation, look for THE INVISIBLE HOST, available on Kindle for $2.99. It was set in New Orleans in 1930.
Oh, I like the setting of that, Jeff. I’m going to look for it right now.
I am a lover of Gothic novels – give me an old Barbara Michaels novel and I am a happy girl.
That said – I’m all about the characters.
If I’m not enjoying the company of the characters, I just say “goodbye” and move along.
So true Kaye. If I won’t spend time with unlikable people in real life why do I want to do it in a book? I mean, I could always read about politics if that was the case.
I love that final line, Susan.
Susan, YES! Exactly!!!!!!
But, in the old Barbara Michaels books, Kaye, the heroine often had a valid reason to be there. In this one, and the one I’m reading, I wonder why they even agreed to go.
Barbara Michaels was a master of the Gothic.
She absolutely was! ❤❤❤
I’m so tired of novels reusing well-known plots (“reinventing” them is the term used in the publicity) and other authors’ characters. The 10 Little Indians plot was intriguing exactly once — when Agatha Christie wrote it. After that, it’s just weak imitation. The reappearance of Sherlock Holmes might have been amusing the first 20 times we saw it, but modern day writers have overdone it to the point that they’ve turned me off this beloved character. It’s not that the books are awful — by most accounts, some are well written and interesting. It’s just that… Sherlock Holmes is somebody else’s character. What’s he doing in all these other people’s books? But obviously there’s a market, and I may be in the very small minority on this.