DESCRIPTION
Two families. One house swap. A vacation to die for.

The white-washed Italian villa is perfect. I thought it might feel odd, living in a stranger’s house for the summer, but as my husband and children swim in the infinity pool, I start to relax. And then, in the back of a wardrobe, I find something that shatters everything…

Sparkling green eyes, square jaw, lopsided smile. A young man with his arm around a beautiful woman. The picture is old and faded but I’d recognize him anywhere. The man is my husband.

MY THOUGHTS
Oh Shalini, you’ve done it again!

The Family Holiday is a hold on to your seats, fasten your seatbelt thrill ride into a multi-layered narrative of a vacation house swap between two families. It seems like an uneven swap, an older but quaint cottage in the still chilly days of an England spring vs. the beautiful, modern, sunlit home on the Amalfi coast. But for Beth, it was her husband’s idea of a long-needed family vacation that she just couldn’t say no to; for Amber, it was a chance to get back to her English roots.

At least, that’s what everyone in the book would like you to believe….

For Beth, things start to go bad right from the get-go, when the car Amber and Renzo were supposed to leave for them at the airport is nowhere to be found. Her husband Niall is moody and distant, and Beth is constantly walking on eggshells. But for the sake of her kids and the planned family time, she decides to make the best of the vacation, even chatting up Luciana, the co-owner of a local restaurant, much to her husband’s disgust.

Then the story takes a turn as the vacation gets decidedly worse, and back home in England, we are privy to Amber’s dark thoughts.

I’ve deliberately left off part of the book description above. It’s best to go in blind as I did, because the story will keep you guessing as to who and why. Just when you think Shalini Boland can’t write any better, she slays it again!

Thanks to NetGalley and Bookouture for a spine-tingling advance reader’s copy.