The House Share tells the story of Immi and Dex, two young twenty-somethings who move into a strange but financially-enticing houseshare in London. A little like a cult and a little like university, the houseshare promotes communal living and a vested interest in helping each other as a community. And as with both a cult and university living, there is a bit of a darker side with things taking a turn for the dangerous.
The House Share is a book of two halves. For the first 60-70%, I really enjoyed it but then something odd happened. Characters started acting stupidly, one of the narrators vanishes off the page and stops being important, mental health gets emphasised in a weird way. It was so disappointing because while the writing itself was still pretty good, the plot had taken a sharp downturn. In particular, the epilogue is a real slog and suffers from having the perpetrator dramatically reflect on their crimes like a Bond villain. I also can't believe we don't get to hear again from Dex's point of view after he finds out he's innocent. That felt like such an oversight to not get his reaction at all.
The final twist of it being a psychological experiment also didn't ring true to me. Why pick those particular people if that was the case? Why is the psychology behind everything so shaky? I am not a clinical psychologist but I do have a doctorate in mental health research and the representation, while not awful, was not super accurate either.
Overall, there is still a lot to like about this book and in terms of the thriller market, this is one of the better ones. It's a shame the quality wasn't consistent throughout but I do think this author has huge potential and I would be interested if they released another thriller
Overall Rating:
.5
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