Psychological thriller set on LONG ISLAND
Thrilling novel set in LONDON
7th August 2025
Room 706 by Ellie Levenson, thrilling novel set in London.
Early June 2025 I began to see a lot of talk about this novel on Social Media, there was a real frisson about it. The tenet of the novel – from what I could glean – was really up my street. I was fortunate enough to acquire an early copy.
This novel will – if all the stars align – garner the same level of buzz as The Girl On The Train by Paula Hawkins: it has a similar level of tension but the evolving story is very different. This is a debut and it is written by someone who has a terrific sense of setting, can manage various timelines well without the narrative feeling disjointed and has a wonderful writing style. In fact, a tick for every element that contributes to an engrossing novel.
Kate is somewhere she shouldn’t be, incarcerated with James, in a hotel room, in the middle of a hostage situation. She is in fact married to Vic, a generously loving husband with whom she has two children. She and James are in a hotel that has full media focus on the evolving situation. They have to be as quiet as mice for fear of alerting the terrorists.
The author cogently sets Kate in her hotel room, pondering her life in the face of possible death. She focuses on the bigger issues in her life and on the mundane, as the hours pass, travelling back and forth in her mind, using any emotional resource available to her to manage this terrible situation – and always mindful of whether she will make it out alive or not.
She reflects on how she met her husband, Vic, and how, actually, he and her children mean the world to her and how the structure of her daily life has really kept her grounded. She muses on the early days in Rome, where she met her future husband and evocatively brings the time and place to life.
She considers how she was tempted into a sporadic affair with James and how it has served her to date. She has also had considerable personal loss in her life, that has impacted her personality and imbued her with fear about the transience of life. And here she is, in a situation that could wipe her out.
The author is gifted at setting the scene, providing a thread of underlying tension It is intelligently written, a tribute to love and relationships and the foibles of the human condition. It is written with poignancy and humanity and I couldn’t put it down.
Some people may have issues with the ending. I, personally, liked it.
Tina for the TripFiction Team
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