Unravelling by Helen Forbes

"I propped up the photo of Mum on my bedside table, and I tried to sleep. It was hopeless. For the first time in years, I wanted her. I needed her. I lay there and imagined I could feel her skinny arms around me, her voice whispering all the broken promises, all the lies. She'd get better. She'd come home. She'd love me forever. She'd never leave me".

Unravelling by Helen Forbes is a gripping psychological thriller, a story of grief and obsession, dealing with issues of mental illness, stigma around it, abuse of vulnerable people. 

There are two main storylines, tightly intertwined, with the third, distinct voice adding their narrative.

We meet Kate, who works in a care home and detests her job. She was brought up by her grandparents, as her tragic young mother was a patient of the old Craig Dunain hospital. Her classmates used to taunt her that her "mother's up the hill and round the bend".

Kate's dreams are haunted by The Craig. When two bodies are discovered in the woods surrounding the asylum, it becomes a catalyst to a chain of eerie revelations and dramatic events.

Kate's mother Ellen died when she was a child. Does the forest hold the secret to her death all those years ago?

"My mother's life, and her death, when I was a child, were surrounded in secrecy. For years, I'd pestered Gran, wanting to know everything..."

Kate's life is a reflection of her trust issues and lack of confidence, which manifests in her love life choices. Her ex is a lizard. Her current love interest Stefan, her co-worker at the care home, is not available, yet she is intent on flirting with him. Kate seems to drift aimlessly through life.

When Kate discovers her mother's journal, written during her stay at the asylum, she comes close to the understanding of the true reasons behind her mother's tragic unravelling.

We follow Ellen's desolate journey into the mental breakdown, and her struggles to adjust to life. One night changes everything in her life, and her fragile mental health collapses. Ellen becomes suspicious of her own parents, her illness is making her unfair and even nasty. She believes everyone is in the conspiracy to take her child away from her. 

Her story is full of mental torment, sadness and fear, but there is also love. Love of her parents and child. Ellen finds true friendship in the asylum. Lady Sif is a wonderful character, with a tragic background of her own. Vulnerable, quirky and kind, she befriends Ellen.

"Ellen hadn't expected to find a friend like Sif, and certainly not in The Craig. Someone that was always there for her. Never pushy. Just there. Making Ellen laugh, calming her down and comforting her, helping her see sense when things overwhelmed her. Sif was bright and funny and compassionate, and without her Ellen wouldn't have coped."

Craig Dunain should have been a place of safety for Ellen, a means to trying to improve her life through therapy and support, but she feels there is no point in fighting for the future. Until a new doctor comes to work in the hospital.

As Kate is reading her mother's journal, she feels anguish and heartache. She also gains a better understanding of her mother as a person. "For such a wee book, the weight of its contents was a constant threat to my sanity..." She is looking for answers to the identity of her father.

Someone else from Ellen's past is searching for her journal, and would stop at nothing to get their hands on it (theirs is the third distinct voice mentioned above). Kate is blissfully unaware that she has a stalker who's watching her every move, and the danger is getting closer and closer.

Will Kate find the answers before it's too late? Can she escape the looming danger to her own life?

Unravelling is a thought-provoking, emotional and disturbing psychological thriller. A sinister modern suspence, a story of secrets, love and loss, loyalty and betrayal. What happens in the past, has serious repercussions that stretch into the present.

The Craig Dunain Hospital, which used to be the lunatic asylum, and known locally as The Craig, is a foreboding and sinister setting for the story. 

It is a poignant tale which shows how a mental illness affects not just the person suffering from it, but their whole family. 

As a mother of a child with special needs who has to take "heavy-duty" medication to ease their anxiety, I found the narrative authentic and at times painful. You take a medication for your condition, but the list of possible side effects is equally frightening. 

Some storylines and manipulative characters made me think of a film Girl, Interrupted. It has a similar vibe of raw poignancy.

It would have been 5/5 from me, if not for the caricature character of Martyna (Stefan's partner). There's enough genuine drama in the book, without a cartoonish villain who downs copious amounts of alcohol and speaks broken English. Her character is one-dimensional and doesn't add anything meaningful to the plot.

Unravelling has absorbed me completely. Dark, heartbreaking and tacitly uplifting at the same time.

Purchase Links

UK https://www.amazon.co.uk/Unravelling-gripping-tale-secrets-murder-ebook/dp/B099NCT6ZM

US https://amzn.to/2XqDZlU

This post is part of the blog tour for Unravelling.

Many thanks to Helen Forbes and Rachel's Random Resources for my copy of the book!

Author Bio –

Crime fiction was not what lawyer, Helen Forbes, expected to write.  As a single parent and mature law student, she used her limited spare time to write contemporary and historical fiction.  It was a chance remark at a writing club that led her to develop a short story into her debut crime novel, In the Shadow of the Hill, featuring DS Joe Galbraith. The novel is set in the Scottish Highlands and Islands, and it was described in one newspaper review as having ‘more twists and turns than the road to the isles, making it impossible to put down.’  The novel and characters proved popular with readers, leading to the publication of a second book in the DS Joe Galbraith series. Madness Lies is set in Inverness and North Uist.  Helen has now taken to crime with a passion, and has published two psychological thrillers. Unravelling is set in Inverness, against the background of a former psychiatric hospital. Deception is set in Edinburgh, and tackles the themes of domestic violence, prostitution and trafficking. Helen has also completed a further thriller set in Edinburgh, which she hopes to publish in 2022. Queen of Grime’s main character is a crime and trauma scene cleaner with a big secret. It is gritty and dark, but also funny and uplifting. Helen hopes to expand Queen of Grime into a series.

 

Social Media Links –

Facebook Author Page https://bit.ly/3mzghfD

Twitter https://twitter.com/foreva48

Website https://www.helenforbes.co.uk/