I have a great fondness for dark crime novels, so I picked Twisted River off of a display labeled "Celtic Noir" with great excitement, having never heard of author Siobhan MacDonald. It's always exciting to discover a new favorite author. What I discovered instead is that while I love the genre, I also love a well-written and well-plotted book, and Twisted River was neither of those things.

Two families swap houses for a week in October. Kate and Mannix want to give their sensitive and bullied son the treat of a week in New York and Hazel wants to show her hometown of Limerick, Ireland to her family. Told in chapters that alternate between the adults, the reader learns about the problems both families are facing.

The story starts to take off on page 159, although the two women mention that they are feeling a sense of rising dread or impending doom several times. The tension in the story is based on characters withholding information from the reader even as the chapter is told from their point of view. So one character will ruminate at length on the ominous text messages he's receiving, while failing to think about the actual messages, or a character will make oblique references in a personal journal that point in one direction, but this will be shown to be a red herring later on. And the ending was just silly.

I loved that this book was set in an unrepresented locale. That's what was good about this book. ( )

Originally posted @ http://readaholiczone.blogspot.com/2016/04/twisted-river-review-incredible-read....

What a mind blowing read! Siobhan MacDonald takes you on this crazy ride of a story. I am not a reader who tries to guess what will happen next I am just there for the journey. The book is written in extremely creative prose were all that is given to the reader is minute details regarding certain aspects happening in the story (I’m not going to give any away) it is such an amazing style unlike I have ever read before. The characters are fabulously developed. I either liked or detested them. As a reader, you will get livid at circumstances during others you feel sorrow, underneath there's always a situation smoldering.

“She looked at him now. At his sheepish expression, looking for solace. In that moment, she wanted to hurt him. Really, really badly. She wanted to reach inside herself and scoop out all the hurt and heartache and drive it deep inside him, twisting and turning it until the pain of it choked him.”

It is a wicked stimulating thriller amid events going awry. The reader is misguided with what is truly occurring showing you not to assume things about others without having all the information. Therefore, good luck trying to figure out what is to occur subsequently. I felt as if I could feel the gloominess hanging over the town of Limerick. This book keeps you on your toes with its power-fullness and twisted intrigue. The only thing that I did not like is the ending, that is not how the process would have been handled & it leads you to know what is going to occur next (the only part of the book that this happens). Twisted River is a fun read.
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This story had some real potential, but.....it ended up just fizzling out.
An American family and an Irish family with a number of secrets they are hiding wind up swapping houses. The Main problem as the stories unfold is that none of it is very believable, and the main characters seem hollow, and stereotyped.
This is another example of a book trying to ride on the coat tales of books like Gone Girl, and The Girl on The Train, in this case Twisted River in neither as well developed nor told. ( )

I won an advanced reader copy of this book from Goodreads. This was a really good mystery that had some interesting and unexpected twists. It is the story of two families - the American Harveys and the Irish O'Brien's who swap houses for a week. Both marriages are having problems and their week away is cut short by a tragic murder. The book jumps between present day and background stories of the characters. The author does a great job of making you believe you know what is going on with the characters, particularly Oscar and Mannix, but throwing in a twist that changes everything you thought you knew. I actually went back and re-read a couple of sections and realized that I did make assumptions based on what the author implied about the character but never actually said. This was a quick read and I recommend it to anyone who is looking for a good mystery/thriller. ( )