The Doll's House

The Doll's House

Synopsis:  From the outside, the house was unremarkable. Just one of many on an ordinary, suburban estate. But inside was a different matter. With pink ribbons and pink walls, stuffed toy animals everywhere and a dining table laid out for a tea party, it was a doll’s house.

The doll was sitting at the table. Life size, with blonde, pigtailed hair and rosy red cheeks, dressed in her best pink party dress. Her finger and thumb curled round the handle of a fine china teacup.

An adult woman. Covered in blood. Eviscerated. Dead.

In all his years on the force, DI Phil Brennan of the Major Incident Squad has never encountered a scene like it. As he investigates he uncovers more bizarre revelations and realises that he must act fast; the next murder has already been planned and the victim is close to home . . .

The Doll’s House is not the type of book I normally find myself reading.  You see, I read constantly (obviously) and my brain is always ticking along even after I shut a book.  It’s not unusual for me to have dreams about the books I read which, in the case of Tania Carver’s newest offering, is not necessarily a good thing!

This book was full of psychopaths, gory murder scenes and scandal and I LOVED it.  I ended up goading myself to read “just a few more pages” all the way through.  Carver does a brilliant job with her characters–making them either easy to like or easy to hate.  You know where you stand within the first few pages.

The main villain, known as The Arcadian, intrigued me to no end and I actually enjoyed the chapters from his point of view the most, though they were short.  There’s just something sickly voyeuristic about getting inside the mind of a deranged killer that interests me to no end.  There was actually a quote from The Arcadian that I marked in the book because it played on my mind a bit after reading it:  ”The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference.  If you hate something, and fear it, it’s because you’re secretly scared that you might love it.”

The crime scenes in this book were truly horrific–I’ve no idea how Tania Carver actually comes up with some of this gory matter!  There were certain aspects of the main murder which the book begins with (no spoilers!) that made my stomach absolutely turn… and I’ve read just about everything!

Though The Doll’s House is the 5th part of a continuing line of books revolving around DI Phil Brennan, you needn’t have read any of the other books for everything to make sense.  There are allusions to past occurrences and cases, but The Doll’s House stands alone just fine in my opinion.

Intense and nightmarish, if The Doll’s House doesn’t keep you up late at night or give you horrible dreams, then you’re more of a messed up person than I am!

By Steph, visit my blog now: http://stephinlondon.com/


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