Louise Candlish has done it yet again with The Heights.  The only way is up for this storyteller supreme!

Having been mightily impressed by Louise Candlish’s last three novels (The Other Passenger, Those People and Our House), it was always going to be intriguing to read her next offering.  With The Heights, we possibly get her greatest piece of work to date.

For anybody who has not read anything by Candlish, then she deals in British psychological suspense thrillers.  You very well could argue she is our very own Gillian Flynn (Gone Girl fame), high praise indeed.

Candlish’s narratives are so convincing because they are believable.  Her characters are believable too.  Twists are aplenty, and you must always be engaged with her texts not to get lost.  However, as with The Heights, the compelling nature of her narrative is what keeps you wanting to read right until the very end. 

Like with her previous novels, the structure of The Heights is very original.  We get told the story via the perspectives of three different characters, in different time periods.  It is the multi-layered nature of the plot that makes it stand out as a high-quality piece of work.

All is well with the classic nuclear family of Ellen Saint’s, until one day her late-teenage son Lucas, is asked by his school to buddy up with a more disadvantaged boy called Kieran Watts.  Watts rebellious behaviour is then what sets the darker train of events in motion.

This is a book about grief, revenge, and taking control of your own destiny in life.  The Heights by the way refers to a tall, slender apartment building in the Tower Bridge area of London. It is there where Ellen sees a ghost from her past.  This is a ghost that she thought her ex-Vic and her, had killed two years ago!

A narrative like this that keeps you guessing right until the end is a great one.  It is a right page-turner of a read at 429 pages long.

You know you have enjoyed a book when you are sorry it has ended.  This was my experience with The Heights.         

I was brave enough to scale the heights.  Trust me now, you will be so glad when you decide to do so too! 5/5.