The People Before: A gripping, twisty suspenseful psychological thriller for 2023 that will keep you up all night!

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However, just as things are spiralling out of control for Jess, the perspective changes and we see a different side of things. This for me rather broke the tension the author had built up. I would really have liked the novel to have continued from Jess's point of view and although it does return to it at the end, the thread had broken somewhat.

Impatient with the leniency shown toward the former Confederate states by Andrew Johnson, who became president after Lincoln’s assassination in April 1865, so-called Radical Republicans in Congress overrode Johnson’s veto and passed the Reconstruction Act of 1867, which basically placed the South under martial law. The following year, the 14th Amendment broadened the definition of citizenship, granting "equal protection” of the Constitution to people who had been enslaved. Congress required southern states to ratify the 14th Amendment and enact universal male suffrage before they could rejoin the Union, and the state constitutions during those years were the most progressive in the region’s history. When the Depression is on them, the father finds the farm to be less profitable and he considers the prospect of setting it and moving. He stays on, not because any special love he feels for the land but because he has invested money and labor on it. One day a group of Maoris visit the farm. They carry with them, in a litter, an old man. They say that, the old man, a tribe elder was born on the hills behind the farm when the land belonged to the Maoris. He wishes now, when he is close to death, to see the place of his birth once again. The father is thoroughly perplexed but Jim is understanding and offers them the greenstone adzes which he believes belonged to the tribe. The Maoris depart to the hills with the old man. Jim goes with them. Sometime during the night the old man dies and his people bury him on the mountain. Jim comes home with an account of how the Maoris lived in the area until the whites came in and defeated them. But they still consider this land to be their home. The father now begins to comprehend what land means to some people.On March 6, 1857, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its decision in Scott v. Sanford, delivering a resounding victory to southern supporters of slavery and arousing the ire of northern abolitionists. During the 1830s, the owner of an enslaved man named Dred Scott had taken him from the slave state of Missouri to the Wisconsin territory and Illinois, where slavery was outlawed, according to the terms of the Missouri Compromise of 1820. Pete’s ideas for renovation are overwhelming, and now that Jess has given up her own job working in a gallery in London, she finds herself on her own in the house a lot, failing to connect with the school mums, and losing her connection with Pete at the same time. And then she meets Eve… and the history of the house starts to unravel. This is a gripping plot that starts with a slow, spine tingling start that feels very creepy and unsettling, and then…..and then comes a switch in the narrator….think total gear change and foot flat on the accelerator pedal! Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for an advanced copy of this book in exchange for a review.

The characters were excellent. With the way it was written you just weren't sure who to trust and whether what you were reading was as straightforward as it made out. I loved that we had the two viewpoints so we we Neither Jess nor Pete is especially likeable. Pete is hardly there and when he is he pays scant attention to Jess’s concerns. Though Jess tries to make friends with other mothers at the school gates, none of her overtures go particularly well and she feels lonely and isolated.Northedge’s book is in two voices; Jess’ story and then Eve’s perspective. Though the sense of malevolence is strong, with a small cast of characters it is not difficult to see where this story is going and from the middle of the book not all of Jess’ actions ring true. It’s not hard to second guess what’s going on and the tension dissipates somewhat as a result. Re-read the last ten lines of part 2. Why does the son think his father might have said or felt something else? Shadbolt’s story is rooted in the colonial history of New Zealand and its wide sweep considers attitudes to land, family relationships and memory. The central encounter between the Pakeha (white New Zealander of European descent) and the Maori is an ironic reversal of the original colonial encounter. Greenstone Europe. This period of his life is recorded in One of Ben’s: ANew Zealand Medley(1993). Before he returned in 1960 hepublished his first book, a collection of stories grandly titledThe New Zealanders(1959). Although the book broughtShadbolt immediate recognition in Britain, where it was highlypraised by such influential reviewers as Alan Sillitoe and Muriel