The Wreckage by Robin Morgan-Bentley

Hello and happy Wednesday  🌞

Today I’m sharing my thoughts on The Wreckage by Robin Morgan-Bentley 💫

Firstly I’d like to apologise for my later review – I have a clutch of half finished reviews that need a polish before being posted and this was one of them so I’m very sorry about that!

✨

Synopsis

One fatal crash

Ben is driving on the motorway, on his usual commute to the school where he works. A day like any other, except for the crash.

Two colliding worlds

Adam has left his home for the last time. In his final despairing act, he jumps in front of Ben’s car, turning the teacher’s world upside down.

Three wrecked lives

Wracked with guilt, Ben seeks out Alice, Adam’s widow, and her 7-year-old son Max. But as he tries to escape the trauma of the wreckage, could Ben go too far in trying to ease his conscience?

Gripping and sinister, The Wreckage is guaranteed to keep you up all night…

My Thoughts

I read this book with an ever-increasing, impending sense of doom in the pit of my stomach.  It was fairly obvious from the get-go that things were not going to go swimmingly here.

The Wreckage was written from two perspectives; that of Alice and that of Ben.  I Ioved ascerbic Alice and her judgy, bitchy thoughts and I really did love benign Ben and his sweet but creepy intentions. It was so interesting to see how each of them interpreted the same events too.

Morgan-Bentley does an absolutely belting job of ramping up the tension after the accident, to a point where it was unbearably claustrophobic and I genuinely felt sick as everything unfolded.

At times, this felt like a kind of backwards psyche-thriller.  I inwardly cringed at Ben’s obsession and infatuation with Alice and how quickly he infiltrated her life in a stifling and totally deluded way; his lies running away with themselves as he tangled himself up in them further and further.

Interestingly, I didn’t find out until after I had read his book that Morgan-Bentley’s other job is actually working with audio books and I felt like something instantly clicked when I found this out; it was so well reflected in his writing – so atmospheric and onomatopoeic – The Wreckage will be so brilliant in audiobook format!

Dark, unsettling and a total head f*ck; this book is just brilliant and I hope lots of people buy it.

The Wreckage is out now in beautiful hardcover and you can buy it here✨

My thanks go to Robin himself for very kindly sending me a (lost) proof and then later an ecopy of this book and to Alex Layt from Orion Books for sending me this picture for my review!

Until next time! Have a wonderful day!

@mrscookesbooks