The Fault by Kitty Sewell

 

From Goodreads

Once inside The Rock there’s only one way out…

17-year-old Mimi has joined her engineering prodigy brother and his diving-instructor fiancée Eva in Gibraltar. Sebastian is leading an exciting and innovative project building a new city on the sheerest face of the Rock. They each struggle to adjust to their new lives together discovering that below Gibraltar’s façade of Britishness is a deeper layer of peculiarities and mystique; it’s a place of mixed traditions which mistrusts outsiders.

Mimi enters into a romantic entanglement with an ex-priest twice her age, a man Sebastian considers a sinister predator. Eva is hiding a secret that might endanger not just her relationship but her very life. Sebastian, torn between dreams of greatness and an urge to rescue his sister, attempts to control his family’s complex interdependence until a violent death shatters everything…

From the Rock there is no escape.

My thoughts

I grabbed a copy of this from Borrowbox and started reading it last September, 24. It got put on hold for various reasons and I got back to reading it in February, 25.

Told from the POV of 3 characters ~ Sebasrian, his fiancee Eva and his younger sister Mimi.  Each short chapter centres around one of the characters, that dip in and out of the past and present.  This encourages you to keep reading, as you think just one more chapter!

This was a claustrophobic read, that took many twists and turns in more ways than one.  There were sections of the book that I didn't enjoy, due to their claustrophobic nature as I must admit that I do have a tendency towards being frightened of claustrophobia and all it entails.  All this added to the atmosphere portrayed between the pages for me.  I have to admit that when I started reading this book, I didn't envision where it would end.

One of the scenes featuring Mimi and three Barbary apes, reminded me of the time that we were on Gibraltar and one of the apes that live there bit the youngest one of my children. Thankfully the guide that we were with knew what to do and made sure that the attack wasn't too horrific!

If you get the chance to read this book, I can thoroughly recommend it.