Novel set in ICELAND
Thriller set on a secluded GREEK ISLAND
12th May 2026
Her Perfect Escape by Rachel Wolf, thriller set on a secluded Greek island.
A group of people are assembled on a secluded island to celebrate the birthday of Dom, a young man. His mother, Tash, is there, his father, Mark, together with various friends and hangers-on who have come together for fun and good times.
At the same time last year, celebrating Dom’s birthday, Tash’s sister, Emma, disappeared. She has not been seen since, and Tash is determined to get to the bottom of what happened to her. She swam out to sea and never came back… After all, the same group of people are gathered here once again and Tash is determined to solve her sister’s mysterious disappearance. There are, of course, secrets galore and as the days pass in glorious sunshine, it seems there is a killer in their midst.
The reader is introduced to a full cast of characters and it is a bit of struggle to get them all straight early on, but they soon slot into place. Tash is observing dynamics and comparing this year with last, assessing personality traits and suspicious or odd behaviour. She just has to get to the bottom of Emma’s fate.
It transpires that the tentacles of drama stretch across the Atlantic into the political world of the USA and then ricochet back to Greece.
There are helicopters and a private boat and all kinds of wealthy facets to colour this story of luxury lives unravelling. There are unwise couplings, suspicious deaths and many machinations to keep the reader entertained.
This author sometimes includes scenes set on the high seas and in her novel Five Nights, I took issue with the descriptions of people disappearing into roiling waves (in the dark) and how they were rescued – pretty nigh impossible but it is, I suppose, fiction after all. In this novel, too, someone falls overboard and despite the dead weight, the person is easily levered back aboard a boat. It is just such a virtually impossible feat. I guess I also didn’t totally buy into Tash and Mark’s new-found situation: Tash seemed happy a year ago, but now, on this anniversary weekend her husband, Mark has arrived with his much younger squeeze. In that intervening year there is the loss of Emma to contend with, Dom’s noticeably erratic behaviour, and presumably some kind of tricky split between the Tash and Mark, which just didn’t seem a truly plausible scenario given the short time frame of less than a year. The fact Mark is there are all, given the circumstances… But those are just quibbles.
Anyway, this is a story that moves this way and that, it has good pace. The setting is clearly somewhere hot because there are plenty of lapping waves, heat and sea breezes, a lovely villa pool and all the trimmings, and a group outing to Mykonos, which underlines that it is Greece. Great for a poolside read.
Tina for the TripFiction Team
Join team TripFiction on Social Media:
Twitter (@TripFiction), Facebook (@TripFiction.Literarywanderlust), YouTube (TripFiction #Literarywanderlust), Instagram (@TripFiction) and Pinterest (@TripFiction) and BlueSky(tripfiction.bsky.social) and Threads (@tripfiction)
Please wait...
