The Family Friend by Claire Douglas

I bought The Family Friend by Claire Douglas on the paperback publication date in Sainsbury’s. I’d recently enjoyed her novel The Wrong Sister, so I was looking forward to reading this one. I’m pleased to say it is another page turner.

Imogen is suspended from her job as a journalist and living with her long-term boyfriend, Josh. She gets a letter saying an old friend, Dorothea Roe, has left her something in her will. Imogen hasn’t seen Dorothea, a famous artist, for 16 years. Imogen is very surprised when she discovers that Dorothea has left her her big house on the outskirts of Bath. Imogen had stayed at the house with her mum briefly as a child, during a tragic summer.

There are questions surrounding Dorothea’s death and, when Imogen moves into the house, she feels the artist has left her some clues to a mystery. But what was Dorothea trying to tell her and why does Imogen feel she is now in danger too?

She makes contact with some of Dorothea’s old friends, but who can she really trust?

Meanwhile, the cracks in her relationship with Josh are starting to show and her relationship with her older sister gets more difficult…

The Family Friend is told in the first person by Imogen and in the third person by Dorothea and some other characters. It is always clear whose chapter it is and when it was set because the chapters are labelled.

There are lots of twists and turns. I did actually guess a couple of the major ones, but without working out the full detail of them. There were so many other twists that I didn’t feel disappointed though.

If you like a psychological thriller, I can definitely recommend The Family Friend, although for me it wasn’t quite as good as The Wrong Sister. I will be looking out for more Claire Douglas novels in the coming months.