Book Review – The Reunion ~ Guillaume Musso
Genre: Thriller/ Fiction
Published: 11 Jul 2019 by W&N, orion Publishing Group
Swathi’s Rating: 4/5
Verdict: Well-paced, page-turner
Today is Blog Tour spot of The Reunion by Mr Musso and I can’t wait to introduce this fantastic atmospheric thriller to y’all!
Plot:
An elite prep school frozen in the snow
Three friends linked by a tragic secret
One girl taken by the night
The Côte d’Azur – 25 years ago
One freezing night, as her campus is paralyzed by a snowstorm, 19-year-old Vinca Rockwell, the most beautiful and glamorous girl in her prep school, runs away with her philosophy teacher, with whom she has been conducting a secret affair. For Vinca, “love is everything or nothing.”
She will never be seen again.
The Côte d’Azur – Present day
Once inseparable, Manon, Thomas and Maxime — Vinca’s best friends — have not spoken since graduation. They meet again at their reunion. Twenty-five years earlier, under terrible circumstances, the three of them committed a murder and buried the body in the gymnasium wall, the same wall that is about to be demolished to make way for an ultramodern new building.
What really happened that long-ago winter night? Now nothing stands in the way of the truth coming out.
Swathi’s Review:
The Reunion is translated from French language into English, although I felt no difference whatsoever. The essence of the novel was intact and I quite enjoyed visualizing the perfect backdrop of Côte d’Azur.
Told from the perspective of Thomas, a top selling Fiction Author ‘The Reunion’ follows Thomas’s visit to his High School where an old gymnasium is planned to be demolished and rebuilt.
Only Thomas has another reason to be there — The body beneath the gym walls! Only his close friends from high school Maxime and Fanny were aware of this but they haven’t seen or heard from each other for 25 years. Will the new school project bring out the secrets hidden from the past and ruin their lives forever?
The tension in the story starts right from the first chapter as it shuffles between the present and the winter of 1992 when it all happened. Vinca Rockwell’s ghost appears all through the book even though she’s not really in it. Thomas is still stuck with her memory after all those years wondering what really happened to her and hoping she is still alive. Theories and speculations about Vinca’s disappearance have been a trending topic of discussion and the author has done a brilliant job deceiving the mind of the readers from guessing the obvious ending.
The characters in the story are all strangers, even though Thomas is the narrator, we still don’t know EVERYTHING about him till the very last. Each character has their own secret and when it comes out slow and sudden, it’s definitely a twist we aren’t looking for!
Never been to France but enjoyed the atmospheric descriptions of the Côte d’Azur and it’s surroundings. Dark and delicious with so many secrets, jealousy, teenage love, and deceival, The Reunion is a fast-paced page turner that could keep the reader engaged and engrossed throughout the book! Quite clearly, Guillaume Musso has made his mark on me and I am adding him to my fave list of authors! I’d love to cuddle with more France-based books from My Musso’s talented hands.
Thanks for having me on the official Blog tour for this book,Tracy Fenton and thanks to Orion, W&N for my proof copy. All opinions are my own.
Author Bio:
One of the most popular authors in France today. From his early childhood with reading books and plays, Guillaume Musso became convinced that one day, he too would write novels. After finishing high school in France, Guillaume Musso left for the United States at the age of 19. He spent several months in New York City, living with other young foreigners and earning his money by selling ice-cream. He came home to France with his head filled with ideas for novels. The readers can easily see the influence his time in the United States has had on him, as the action in his books takes place overseas. He currently teaches in a high school in the south of France, all the while working on his novels. His first published novel was with Editions Anne Carriere in 2001: Skidamarink, this novel did not reach out to the masses however, but his following novels published on XO Editions have all been hugely successful, some of them translated into 20 languages. His novel, Afterwards, has been adapted to the big screen and was in cinemas January 2009, starring John Malkovich, Evangeline Lily and Romain Duris.
