When Father began to build the wall, we didn’t understand at first. We thought it was to keep something in—It couldn’t be to keep anything out. There wasn’t anyone on the island but us. But as the wall grew higher and higher, we began to wonder.”
📸 @aprillwoodauthor
Synopsis:
When a barrier between truth and illusion grows stronger, a family’s trust crumbles in this arresting short story by the number one New York Times bestselling author of The Woman in Cabin 10.
Leah has spent her formative years isolated on a remote island with her family. But their quiet existence, far from the devastated mainland, is cracking. Father, sensing a coming threat, demands that a wall be built. As the stone blockade rises, Father’s paranoia escalates. So does Leah’s dread that the violence the family left behind has found its way to their sanctuary.
Ruth Ware’s Snowflakes is part of Hush, a collection of six stories, ranging from political mysteries to psychological thrillers, in which deception can be a matter of life and death.
Genre:
Psychological Thriller
Mystery
Suspense
Tropes & Themes:
“Live by the sword; die by the sword”
Isolated Island
Archnemesis Father
Rating:
⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐
“They’re coming” was all he said.”
Young Leah escaped her homeland with her brothers, Cain and Jacob, younger sister, May, Woof the dog and their father — in absolute fear for her life and the safety of her family. When they arrive at a desolated Island, she feels safe being so far away from the dangers of the mainland. But as time passes and her father’s demeanor darkens, he pushes his children harder to focus on building a rock wall instead of harvesting crops and milking cows. The danger they fled from arrives to the Island, and like good little soldiers, the children are prepared alongside their father.
I enjoyed this read, albeit it’s predictability and somewhat inconsistent storyline, Spoiler Alert ⚠ (where Leah remembers witnessing a traumatic event involving her mother versus the truth which was that the children were so confused and scared that they didn’t realize until after escape that their mother wasn’t present, which was told in the beginning.) End of Spoiler Alert ⚠
However, some of the predictability can be explained through the POV of Leah, a young child who believes her father is her world, and therefore the “point-of-view lens” was clouded not only by her allegiance to her father but also her immaturity.
I suspected the ending from the start, as there were MANY obvious clues, but perhaps that was the point. Overall, there’s a lot of suspense with the not-knowing-for-sure and the dysfunctional family dynamics and unpredictability of “Father”. In the end, there is a happily-for-now, which was a nice way to conclude this installment of the Hush Collection.
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