There is much to admire about Sarah Hawthorn’s debut novel, A Voice in the Night. Her taut prose and a first-person narrative that alternates between time periods – September 2001 New York and Present Day London – steadily ratchets up the tension levels. And her enigmatic, at times spiky and unpredictable protagonist Lucie, and her romantic entanglements keep readers guessing… our sympathies and alliances constantly shifting.

This novel is not quite a ‘literary’ thriller, the focus on character reliability (or otherwise) and the entwining mystery plot rather than prose styling. But A Voice in the Night goes far deeper than most psychological thrillers in its nuanced exploration of the potential long-term and lasting impacts of grief. Read full review and author interview >> https://www.bookloverbookreviews.com/2021/07/a-voice-in-the-night-sarah-hawthorn... ( )

For most of this novel I was planning on giving it 3 stars - Lucie was a strangely unlikeable heroine, who kept reaching out to the men in her life with her problems and then being offended when they tried to help her. She had appalling and indiscriminate taste in men and was somehow able to afford a cottage in Fulham on a salaried partner's wages. The solicitors' firm she worked for featured a receptionist who seemed to more or less manage the office, presumably while also answering the phone and manning the front desk. I was taking all that in my stride and then came the ending, which was extremely over the top and at the same time meant that in retrospect the whole plot was a lot of fuss over not very much.

This should also be filed in the category of novels where a woman's home is continually interfered with while she is out, but she doesn't get the locks changed - why? ( )

A Voice in the Night by Sarah Hawthorn has a premise that immediately hooked me in. In 2001, Lucie was an intern at a New York law firm having an affair with a married man. Martin was planning on leaving his wife to be with Lucie but after heading off to the World Trade Centre on the morning of the 9/11 attacks, she never saw him again and grieved his loss deeply.

Twenty years later, Lucie is working at a prestigious law firm in London when she receives a note:

"At last I've found you. A shock I'm sure. But in time I'll explain. Martin"

Woah! That was it, I was completely hooked and had to read this book. In January this year, I read The World of PostSecret by Frank Warren and was haunted by this secret: "Everyone who knew me before 9/11 believes I'm dead."

I've since learned that people have been known to use a natural disaster or major incident as an opportunity to disappear, essentially faking their own deaths in order to start a new life somewhere else. This still fascinates me, so how timely to come across this debut novel exploring the possibility of just that. Does Lucie have a stalker or is Martin really back from the dead after faking his own disappearance?

Set in London, New York and Sydney, Lucie's career situation, friendships and her casual love interests propel the story along making it very readable.

A Voice in the Night is a domestic thriller with a few twists and turns that I definitely didn't see coming. Ultimately, I wanted the story to go a certain way and it didn't, so for that reason, it wasn't a full five star read for me. A Voice in the Night by Australian author Sarah Hawthorn is a solid debut for domestic thriller fans.

* Copy courtesy of Transit Lounge * ( )