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Sundial

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About this listen

From the best-selling author of The Last House on Needless Street, a Richard and Judy Book Club pick.

You can't escape the desert. You can't escape Sundial.

Rob fears for her daughters. For Callie, who collects tiny bones and whispers to imaginary friends. For Annie, because she fears what Callie might do to her. Rob sees a darkness in Callie, one that reminds her of the family she left behind. She decides to take Callie back to her childhood home, to Sundial, deep in the Mojave Desert. And there she will have to make a terrible choice.

Callie is afraid of her mother. Rob has begun to look at her strangely. To tell her secrets about her past that both disturb and excite her. And Callie is beginning to wonder if only one of them will leave Sundial alive....

From the best-selling author of The Last House on Needless Street comes a stunning thriller exploring the toxicity of the mother-daughter bond, and the power of the past to twist the present.

©2022 Catriona Ward (P)2022 Profile Books Ltd Crime Thrillers Domestic Thrillers Horror Suspense Thriller & Suspense Fiction Thriller

Critic reviews

"A thrilling hall of mirrors filled with deeply disturbing twists." (Alex Michaelides)

"A desert-dust nightmare with a scorpion's sting, and I loved it." (Emma Stonex)

"Ambitious, brutal and breathtakingly original" (Tammy Cohen)
All stars
Most relevant
Love Catriona Ward and Sundial doesn't disappoint. Weird, Spellbinding and Elaborate. Catriona takes the reader on a journey into peculiar and traumatised minds. Couldn't stop listening til the end....

Brilliant

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Ive had to take a few days to process my thoughts on this one, and they are still pretty jumbled!
I really struggled at first mainly with the first chapter. It was super long and I didn't feel any connection to it at all. I considered DNF'ing or at least returning at another time, but I carried on, and once I'd got through that and the book started to take a darker turn I was hooked. I don't know what that says about me 😅

The story alternates between Rob and her daughter Callie's POV Rob's being both present and past, and something that I really liked was the way both narrators stories overlapped slightly, so that we got to experience the same parts from both of their eyes.
Multiple POVs and timelines are something I love in a book, it adds to the suspense and makes it even more gripping, giving that real need to listen on.
There were little snippets thrown in from 'Arrow Wood' a book Rob was writing and I didn't really get those parts, they weren't necessary as they didn't add anything to the plot, but I didn't dislike them as much as I did Irving! He was horrible 😡
I know I would have struggled if I was actually reading this as some of the chapters were really long, but saying all of that, did I love this book? Absolutely! It was dark, twisty and gave me all the emotions.
I was left with a pretty big unanswered question though
In summary, read this book, it's brilliant 😬
4.5⭐️

Great listen

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The book may be good, but the narration was not for me. She seemed to almost sing each line, as if it was poetry. Returned.

Couldn't get past the Narration

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This book is much much much too long and needed a good edit. The book-within-a-book chapters could go for a start.

needs editing

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Struggled to finish, found the story boring and the characters unlikeable-couldn't care less about any of them. Felt sorry only for the dogs so I've found the animal abuse unnecessary. Waste of my credit.

Disappointing

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