Robyn Harding | The Party

So, I've been lucky enough to have a few chats on Instagram with the lovely Robyn Harding before I even got a chance to order her book. Her enthusiasm with bloggers and some of the kind words she shared about my blog before I could even feature her book were literally fantastic and she was an absolute pleasure to talk to. With someone that kind, I had to wonder what kind of talent she was hiding. I soon found out! The praise with her debut novel has been utterly fantastic and I was not let down.

Plot:

Sweet sixteen. It’s an exciting coming of age, a milestone, and a rite of passage. Jeff and Kim Sanders plan on throwing a party for their daughter, Hannah—a sweet girl with good grades and nice friends. Rather than an extravagant, indulgent affair, they invite four girls over for pizza, cake, movies, and a sleepover. What could possibly go wrong?

But things do go wrong, horrifically so. After a tragic accident occurs, Jeff and Kim’s flawless life in a wealthy San Francisco suburb suddenly begins to come apart. In the ugly aftermath, friends become enemies, dark secrets are revealed in the Sanders’ marriage, and the truth about their perfect daughter, Hannah, is exposed.

Review:

Talk about starting off with a bang! Harding begins this journey with a mother waking up from an Ambien-induced slumber to her daughter crying saying there's been an accident and there's blood on her hands. Whoa. 

From there we are given some small details into what happened from Hannah, the daughter. There's a mysterious presence throughout this that tells the reader that there's so much more to the story than the bits and pieces Hannah remembers. From here, we are taken on a long trek of not only four central characters dealing with what happened on that awful night, but also falling deep into the cracks of some pretty heavy issues they are dealing with on their own. Harding does not only a fantastic job with keeping the events that occurred that night shrouded in mystery, but you're not only focusing on that as a reader. There's so much more of not only that story to tell, but equal parts of other stories that could also end in peace or turmoil. 

What I really enjoyed about the characters in this one is who was chosen for the four character perspectives and why. Without giving too much away, the four central characters are keys to the element of mystery as you get to see them through how they view themselves as well as how other characters see them through their own interactions. Harding does an amazing job of not only writing adult characters and the issues they deal with, but also teenage characters and how they are so different today than they wet when their parents were their age. I couldn't get enough of all of the characters, whether they were good or evil as they were all written fantastically. 

This is a domestic thriller at its finest and Harding does not hold back when it comes to getting into the minds of her characters and the many plot points that flow through this story. This could've been four mini-stories and I still would've loved it. The pacing in this one was phenomenally done as we start off so crazy and then Harding pulls back to let us get to know these key characters and find out the small and large roles they are going to play in this fun and tense mystery. Things started to get so tense in the middle of this novel that I found myself eagerly eating up pages as I wondered as a reader and also putting myself into these different characters minds - where do we go from here? The darker elements in this really shine throughout the novel as Harding digs deep into some heavy issues that not only teenagers deal with, but also adults. A+ for plot, characterization, and pacing. Just when I thought things couldn't get crazier, Harding left me with a final chapter that chilled me to the core and had me wondering, do we really know what anyone is capable of? I sure don't. Not after this. 

Rating: 5/5