Keep You Close

Author: Lucie Whitehouse

Publisher: Bloomsbury

Release Date: May 3, 2016

Reviewer: Jessica Higgins

Rowan Winter is about to discover how far she will go to find out the truth when her estranged friend is found dead. She knows there is more to the story and is determined to find out the truth.

When Marianne Glass falls to her death it is ruled an accident. She and Rowan haven’t spoken in almost a decade but Rowan knows there is more to the story and doesn’t believe it was a simple accident.  Rowan used to be close to Marianne and her whole family.  She didn’t have a mother and her father wasn’t around, so the Glass family became part of her family.  Since they haven’t spoken in the last ten years, Rowan doesn’t know much of Marianne’s adult life or how to investigate what happened to cause her fall.  As she searches for answers, danger follows her at every turn and something hidden from her past makes her worry about her own fate.

I wanted to like this, I really did. I tried to get into the story but it wasn’t happening.  There was too much narrative that didn’t always make sense and slowed the progress and at times the narrator had me scratching my heard to try and figure out what was happening.  There was lots of jumping from past to present to explain what happened to affect the characters now.  The author didn’t have very good transitions to make clear where we were at in the story which made it hard to understand at times.  I couldn’t really connect with the characters either.  There were too many thrown out that didn’t seem to matter much to the story, then when we were with the characters that did matter I had trouble caring about them.  The ending played out nicely though.  It wrapped things up tying it all back with the beginning much better than I expected.  Overall it was not the best book and not one I will be picking up again.  I know there are many out there that will really enjoy the story, especially the setting in the London Art world.