Lead Review

• Book: The Heatwave
• Location: Kent
• Author: Katerina Diamond

Review Author: Tina Hartas

NOW. Felicity is now living in the Hartsop Valley in the Lake District, with her partner Chris and their children. She hears that a girl has gone missing in her old home town of Sidmouth and she is transported back to her adolescent years, when a girl also went missing. The parallels are such that she drops everything, to the astonishment of her family, and drives down to ascertain the circumstances. She rather wants to come to terms with her past experiences, none of which have really been divulged to Chris. It transpires she is inevitably sitting on huge secrets.

THEN. Felicity and Jasmine, in their mid teens, were friends and each had a very different background. Felicity’s mother, her main caregiver, was largely an irresponsible parent who dated unsuitable men and drank and smoked. Jasmine lived with her parents, who were both committed do-gooders and as such would spend the summer months, with Jasmine in tow, helping out on projects in less fortunate areas all around the world.

Jasmine’s parents have given Tim a home in the cottage in their garden, an ex military man who has fallen on hard times. Jasmine takes an instant dislike to him but, given she was assaulted by a teacher, she assumes she has lost her perspective and ability to judge character. Her parents assure her that he is an OK guy.

NOW. Jasmine is back in her old hunting ground and memories are coming into sharp relief. She is knocking back the alcohol and starts to feel overwhelmed by the unfinished business that is in her background life. Things have really come back to haunt her.

Long story short, there are twists and turns aplenty as the story evolves between the two time frames. As an overall storyline, it didn’t really work for me. The adolescent girls appraise their various situations through eyes that sometimes feel far too mature for their age group, to wit an adult has written the script for them without really getting into their 16 year old shoes; at other times the description of their behaviour swings towards the Young Adult genre.

The back and forth of the time periods never felt quite balanced and I didn’t find a rhythm to really pull me in. As the narrative comes to its conclusion, there is a lot of telling and unpeeling that just felt overly convoluted and generally beyond the realms of credibility. The motive for the identified killer in the end came down to simply portrayed childhood experiences – in novels this seems to be an increasingly popular way of explaining reprehensible and destructive behaviour but which, to my mind, is a quick way to come to a conclusion. This is particularly unsatisfactory when the psychological impacts of early years’ experience aren’t really fleshed out in the course of the narrative, and such motives are used as a kind of shorthand to provide a conclusive ending. This then actually just feels like such a lame device for justifying a killing. Apart from Jasmine, I just couldn’t get alongside the characters and feel engaged with them.

I am not really sure whether the book cover of the water’s edge is suggestive of the content. Personally I felt it indicated somewhere hot and perhaps a more traditional foreign ‘holiday destination’ than Sidmouth – a lot of the action takes place in the town and in dwellings, and events at a funfair are pivotal. Location isn’t really strong in terms of TripFiction.

It is quite a well written novel and many of the author’s other books have very high review ratings. She does have an ardent fan base, so I will definitely pick up another of her titles.

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