Genres
Publication
Hodder & Stoughton Ltd (2015), 432 pages
Description
"Pulled into a deadly game of deception, secrets, and lies, a woman must find the truth in order to defeat a mysterious opponent, protect her daughter, and save her own life in this dazzling standalone psychological thriller with an unforgettable ending from the New York Times bestselling author of Woman with a Secret and The Monogram Murders. You thought you knew who you were. A stranger knows better. You've left the city and the career that nearly destroyed you--for a fresh start on the coast. But trouble begins when your daughter withdraws, after her new best friend, George, is unfairly expelled from school. You beg the principal to reconsider, only to be told that George hasn't been expelled. Because there is, and was, no George. Who is lying? Who is real? Who is in danger? Who is in control? As you search for answers, the anonymous calls begin a stranger, who insists that you and she share a traumatic past and a guilty secret. And then the caller threatens your life. This is Justine's story. This is Justine's family. This is Justine's game. But it could be yours"--… (more)
User reviews
LibraryThing member SusieH5
A psychological thriller which kept up the tension throughout, and kept me guessing until the end.
Justine leaves London to settle in Devon with her family. After a demanding career she plans to do nothing at all. Daughter Ellen seems to be happy at school until her friend George is expelled.
Strange anonymous phone calls become increasingly threatening and disturbing, and Justine’s husband Alex insists on involving the police.
An intriguing story, well worth the read, with some interesting twists.
Justine leaves London to settle in Devon with her family. After a demanding career she plans to do nothing at all. Daughter Ellen seems to be happy at school until her friend George is expelled.
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Strange anonymous phone calls become increasingly threatening and disturbing, and Justine’s husband Alex insists on involving the police.
An intriguing story, well worth the read, with some interesting twists.
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LibraryThing member olegalCA
Sophie Hannah gets more and more bizarre with each book. Entertaining.
LibraryThing member RidgewayGirl
Sophie Hannah writes intense, convoluted novels centered around a woman who is involved in a crime (as a witness or participant or victim) but from an odd angle that make her seem delusional. Her main characters are often unpleasant or frantic, often doing things to make it hard for anyone to
Justine has left her fast-paced career and moved her family to rural Devon, hoping to do nothing but putter around the beautiful estate they've purchased, Speedwell House, while her husband travels and her daughter attends school. But even on the way to their new home, Justine is struck by an affinity for an unattractive house along a busy road. Soon after arriving, her daughter becomes distressed by the expulsion of another pupil and Justine begins receiving threatening phone calls from a woman who thinks Justine is called "Sandie."
A Game for All the Family is certainly as complex and odd as any of Hannah's other books. Justine is an unlikeable character, being arrogant and high-handed in her dealings with others. She's also prone to not doing basic things that most people would do in her circumstances, while reacting strongly to much smaller events. It's a stand-alone novel, with out the usual detectives to do the work of solving the crimes and puzzles, and this is a weakness. Since the only view the reader has is from the inside of a biased and erratic narrator, there's no way to ground the story in any sort of objectivity. And Justine is consumed with her own opinions and personal bugbears that I'm still not entirely certain what happened. And some of the reactions of the people around the main character make very little sense.
Still, this is a rare misfire by an author who has so far been reliable in her crime novels. I look forward to reading the next one, which I am relieved to see is once again balanced by the usual detectives.
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believe them. Here Hannah sticks to this blueprint, but she has done away with her usual counterpoint of the point of view of the detectives investigating the case. Justine has left her fast-paced career and moved her family to rural Devon, hoping to do nothing but putter around the beautiful estate they've purchased, Speedwell House, while her husband travels and her daughter attends school. But even on the way to their new home, Justine is struck by an affinity for an unattractive house along a busy road. Soon after arriving, her daughter becomes distressed by the expulsion of another pupil and Justine begins receiving threatening phone calls from a woman who thinks Justine is called "Sandie."
A Game for All the Family is certainly as complex and odd as any of Hannah's other books. Justine is an unlikeable character, being arrogant and high-handed in her dealings with others. She's also prone to not doing basic things that most people would do in her circumstances, while reacting strongly to much smaller events. It's a stand-alone novel, with out the usual detectives to do the work of solving the crimes and puzzles, and this is a weakness. Since the only view the reader has is from the inside of a biased and erratic narrator, there's no way to ground the story in any sort of objectivity. And Justine is consumed with her own opinions and personal bugbears that I'm still not entirely certain what happened. And some of the reactions of the people around the main character make very little sense.
Still, this is a rare misfire by an author who has so far been reliable in her crime novels. I look forward to reading the next one, which I am relieved to see is once again balanced by the usual detectives.
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LibraryThing member SheTreadsSoftly
A Game for All the Family by Sophie Hannah is a complex family drama where insanity is a close companion.
Justine Merrison has left London for Devon, along with her opera singer husband, Alex, and their 14 year-old daughter, Ellen. Justine, a former TV producer plans to do nothing at Speedwell
At the same time her daughter Ellen is writing a murder mystery story for school about the Ingrey family, who, from the story, may have lived at Speedwell House in the past. Justine is concerned about the events in the story and her daughter's frame of mind to be writing about such things. When she talks to Ellen, Ellen is more distraught that her best friend, George Donbavand, has been expelled from school for no good reason. When Justine asks about George at the school, she is told that no such student ever existed.
All the bizarre events meander down a twisted, convoluted trail with several implausible leaps of intuition to eventually interconnect in the end. While Hannah does an excellent job making you wonder about the reliability of Justine as a narrator, she also expects you to follow and accept Justine's implausible connections and impetuous behavior as normal perceptive actions. Many of them aren't. Additionally, there is a whole lot going on that you need to keep straight, including alternate chapters with the story Ellen is writing about the Ingrey family.
I'm in a quandary about this novel. While I basically enjoyed it, it also felt way too long, complicated, and entangled to be credible. No matter how how relaxed the school is, no head mistress of a school would give out any information about a family in the school. Additionally, most people would contact the police as soon as they received the first threatening phone call, and they would have been taken seriously until they had cause to doubt their veracity. In most cases the authorities would be called if a family was behaving like the Donbavands.
There were more problematic leaps of credibility for me. While I did enjoy the novel, I'm not sure the ending was worth it. For that reason it's only recommended.
Disclosure: My Kindle edition was courtesy of HarperCollins for review purposes.
Justine Merrison has left London for Devon, along with her opera singer husband, Alex, and their 14 year-old daughter, Ellen. Justine, a former TV producer plans to do nothing at Speedwell
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House, their new estate. Trouble starts when she receives a weird, oddly threatening phone call from some woman who apparently thinks Justine should know her. After a second phone call, it becomes clear that whoever is calling has a lot of information about Justine while she still doesn't have a clue about the identity of the caller.At the same time her daughter Ellen is writing a murder mystery story for school about the Ingrey family, who, from the story, may have lived at Speedwell House in the past. Justine is concerned about the events in the story and her daughter's frame of mind to be writing about such things. When she talks to Ellen, Ellen is more distraught that her best friend, George Donbavand, has been expelled from school for no good reason. When Justine asks about George at the school, she is told that no such student ever existed.
All the bizarre events meander down a twisted, convoluted trail with several implausible leaps of intuition to eventually interconnect in the end. While Hannah does an excellent job making you wonder about the reliability of Justine as a narrator, she also expects you to follow and accept Justine's implausible connections and impetuous behavior as normal perceptive actions. Many of them aren't. Additionally, there is a whole lot going on that you need to keep straight, including alternate chapters with the story Ellen is writing about the Ingrey family.
I'm in a quandary about this novel. While I basically enjoyed it, it also felt way too long, complicated, and entangled to be credible. No matter how how relaxed the school is, no head mistress of a school would give out any information about a family in the school. Additionally, most people would contact the police as soon as they received the first threatening phone call, and they would have been taken seriously until they had cause to doubt their veracity. In most cases the authorities would be called if a family was behaving like the Donbavands.
There were more problematic leaps of credibility for me. While I did enjoy the novel, I'm not sure the ending was worth it. For that reason it's only recommended.
Disclosure: My Kindle edition was courtesy of HarperCollins for review purposes.
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LibraryThing member jfe16
Justine Merrison has abandoned her television career and left the city, seeking a more stress-free life. She’s determined to do Nothing. But her daughter, Ellen, is suddenly withdrawn and Justine discovers there’s some question as to whether or not the girl’s best friend actually exists. And,
Justine sets out to find the answers, but becomes entangled in a mystery she has trouble understanding. Will she find a way to bring her family safely through this inexplicable puzzle?
Despite the intriguing-sounding premise and some truly lovely writing, readers may find the gratuitous profanity off-putting and many will be hard-pressed to find any redeeming qualities in the snarky, self-obsessed Justine, her clueless opera singer husband, and her unjustifiably rude daughter.
Unfortunately, the increasingly-implausible storyline coupled with the plot twists and turns leading to a rather inane resolution make this a disappointing tale.
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to make things even more difficult, the unknown threat-making telephone caller has escalated to making death threats. Justine sets out to find the answers, but becomes entangled in a mystery she has trouble understanding. Will she find a way to bring her family safely through this inexplicable puzzle?
Despite the intriguing-sounding premise and some truly lovely writing, readers may find the gratuitous profanity off-putting and many will be hard-pressed to find any redeeming qualities in the snarky, self-obsessed Justine, her clueless opera singer husband, and her unjustifiably rude daughter.
Unfortunately, the increasingly-implausible storyline coupled with the plot twists and turns leading to a rather inane resolution make this a disappointing tale.
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LibraryThing member perkypup36
In my opinion this is a very interesting read. At first, I was a little confused about the story and the writing project that Ellen, the teenage daughter of Justine, was doing, but knowing it wasn't just there figured it played an important role. After a couple chapters I had trained my mind to
So the story starts off with Justine and her family, Alex (the husband) and Ellen (teenaged daughter) moving from a big city to a smaller one after she terminated her career in TV. There was a conflict in her career and she decided she was done with that. She notices a house on the way to her new home and it strikes some sort of unnerving core to her and it stays in the back of her mind even though it has no perceivable reason to.
After arriving at their new home, Alex goes off on tour (he's an opera singer) and Ellen is settling in at her school, when Justine starts receiving odd, threatening phone calls. Justine is sure these calls are a case of mistaken identity so tries to reason with the caller. At just about the same time, Ellen becomes moody and upset and won't confide in her mother about the reason at first. Justine comes across a story that Ellen is writing for school and finds the few pages extremely creepy and it starts to really bother her and she thinks it might be contributed to the sour mood she has been in.
As days go by, she slowly learns that Ellen's best friend, George, has been expelled from school over what Ellen explains is a misunderstanding. Justine goes to the school to try and straighten out the issue and is met with lies and shady behavior from the principal and staff at the school which sets her on high alert that this is much more than she thought.
Not being able to get that house out of her mind, and thinking that her daughter's school story is a true story, she begins to investigate all possible leads to connect these events all together. The house ends up being the home of a dog breeder and Justine comes back with a little dog, but no definite connection between the story and real life. The creepy calls continue and she has contacted the police with no resolution.
Alex comes rushing home to be with his family and together they begin to face the odd events that start taking place...the phone calls, the expulsion of the student and Ellen's sulky behavior, the labels over the house name that happen one night, the grave dug in their garden after one of the calls mentions that, etc.
Slowly the story ties together binding the writing project of Ellen's to real life and the ending is shocking in it's own right. A real psychological thriller.
**I received a copy of this book through a good reads giveaway.**
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follow both of these stories knowing that they were both important to the ending of the story.So the story starts off with Justine and her family, Alex (the husband) and Ellen (teenaged daughter) moving from a big city to a smaller one after she terminated her career in TV. There was a conflict in her career and she decided she was done with that. She notices a house on the way to her new home and it strikes some sort of unnerving core to her and it stays in the back of her mind even though it has no perceivable reason to.
After arriving at their new home, Alex goes off on tour (he's an opera singer) and Ellen is settling in at her school, when Justine starts receiving odd, threatening phone calls. Justine is sure these calls are a case of mistaken identity so tries to reason with the caller. At just about the same time, Ellen becomes moody and upset and won't confide in her mother about the reason at first. Justine comes across a story that Ellen is writing for school and finds the few pages extremely creepy and it starts to really bother her and she thinks it might be contributed to the sour mood she has been in.
As days go by, she slowly learns that Ellen's best friend, George, has been expelled from school over what Ellen explains is a misunderstanding. Justine goes to the school to try and straighten out the issue and is met with lies and shady behavior from the principal and staff at the school which sets her on high alert that this is much more than she thought.
Not being able to get that house out of her mind, and thinking that her daughter's school story is a true story, she begins to investigate all possible leads to connect these events all together. The house ends up being the home of a dog breeder and Justine comes back with a little dog, but no definite connection between the story and real life. The creepy calls continue and she has contacted the police with no resolution.
Alex comes rushing home to be with his family and together they begin to face the odd events that start taking place...the phone calls, the expulsion of the student and Ellen's sulky behavior, the labels over the house name that happen one night, the grave dug in their garden after one of the calls mentions that, etc.
Slowly the story ties together binding the writing project of Ellen's to real life and the ending is shocking in it's own right. A real psychological thriller.
**I received a copy of this book through a good reads giveaway.**
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LibraryThing member BDartnall
A slowly unfurling horror - a twisted woman who invents a family tragedy and then forces everyone in her life to believe it, & live accordingly. Told in the voice of Justine Merrison, an overworked television developer who quits her job and moves w/her family out of London, fully intending to do
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NOTHING but who stumbles into the drama of another family's life through her daughters (at first, secret) friendship with the strange George Donbavand. Between the creepy, unnerving "story" her daughter writes for a school project, to the increasingly shrill anonymous phone calls Justine receives telling her to get away from the town, from Speedwell House, the foreboding and convoluted possibilities grow until the very last pages ... Yikes! Sometimes I felt Hannah overused the interior monologues of Justine and dialogue between characters to reveal details or further complicate the clues, instead of actually moving the story forward? And the " real" events of the plot interspersed w/ chapters of the Addams Family style tale of the apocryphal Ingrey family and their murderous youngest daughter, Perrine -.great device but a bit lengthy. Nevertheless a compelling read w/ a believable determined protagonist - and a real twist for the ending - wow. Show Less
LibraryThing member nyiper
Great audio read by Lucinda Clare, Fiona Hardingham, and Gavin Stenhouse. This was just plain fun to listen to and you really do NOT know what's going to happen until the very end--a good mystery!
LibraryThing member readinglife11
Starts well but the ending is very disappointing. It's as if the Author can't be bothered to finish it. Poor writing from a good writer.
LibraryThing member seasonsoflove
I received an ARC of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. This did not affect my opinion of the book or my review itself.
Sophie Hannah, in my opinion, is one of the few writers today who could pull a story (and a story-within-a-story) like this off.
Justine and her family
But then her daughter, Ellen seems to change before her eyes, becoming withdrawn and secretive. Ellen finally admits that she is upset because her best friend, George, has been unfairly expelled from her new school.
When Justine marches into the school to right this terrible wrong, though, she is told that George hasn't been expelled. George doesn't exist.
Woven into this wonderfully bizarre and intriguing tale is a story Ellen is writing for class, the story of a family with a murderer among them.
This is a book you will not be able to put down. The tension builds and builds until you have to stop everything else you're doing to keep turning those pages. While, for me at least, I don't think any ending could have completely lived up to the incredible buildup, the resolution packed an amazing, Hannah-caliber punch.
Sophie Hannah, in my opinion, is one of the few writers today who could pull a story (and a story-within-a-story) like this off.
Justine and her family
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have left the big city of London for a quieter life in the country. Determined to leave the broken pieces of her once-powerful career behind, Justine settles into a life of "doing Nothing" with a capital N.But then her daughter, Ellen seems to change before her eyes, becoming withdrawn and secretive. Ellen finally admits that she is upset because her best friend, George, has been unfairly expelled from her new school.
When Justine marches into the school to right this terrible wrong, though, she is told that George hasn't been expelled. George doesn't exist.
Woven into this wonderfully bizarre and intriguing tale is a story Ellen is writing for class, the story of a family with a murderer among them.
This is a book you will not be able to put down. The tension builds and builds until you have to stop everything else you're doing to keep turning those pages. While, for me at least, I don't think any ending could have completely lived up to the incredible buildup, the resolution packed an amazing, Hannah-caliber punch.
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LibraryThing member kbranfield
A Game for All the Family by Sophie Hannah is a perplexing mystery within a mystery. Following their move from London to the bucolic countryside, Justine Merrison begins getting a series threatening phone calls she believes might be tied to her fourteen year old daughter Ellen's writing
Having recently quit her stressful job in television, Justine is looking forward to doing Nothing. The first few months of life in their new house are idyllic but the first disquieting phone calls occurs on the same day she finds out Ellen is upset about her friend George's expulsion from school. When Justine tries to intervene on George's behalf, she is stunned to learn there is no George so therefore, there was no expulsion. Despite a few doubts, Justine believes Ellen's story and she is determined to get to the bottom of what happened and find out why the school is lying to her. At the same time, she continues receiving telephone calls that are increasingly sinister. She is also growing concerned about Ellen's writing project about a murder mystery that appears to be based on real life events but her search for more information leads to one dead end after another. Believing all of these events are somehow linked, Justine begins her own investigation but will she uncover the truth before it is too late?
The premise of A Game for All the Family is certainly unique but the execution of the story falls a little flat. The chapters alternate between the present day events and Ellen's story and while, initially both story arcs are interesting, there is little progression in either storyline. The dual storylines are written in two distinct voices but Ellen's murder mystery is so incredibly implausible that it eventually detracts from the main storyline. With each incredulous plot twist, the novel becomes a convoluted mess of highly improbable coincidences.
All in all, this latest release by Sophie Hannah's is an entertaining but overly long and somewhat bizarre mystery that readers will have to suspend disbelief to enjoy.
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project.Having recently quit her stressful job in television, Justine is looking forward to doing Nothing. The first few months of life in their new house are idyllic but the first disquieting phone calls occurs on the same day she finds out Ellen is upset about her friend George's expulsion from school. When Justine tries to intervene on George's behalf, she is stunned to learn there is no George so therefore, there was no expulsion. Despite a few doubts, Justine believes Ellen's story and she is determined to get to the bottom of what happened and find out why the school is lying to her. At the same time, she continues receiving telephone calls that are increasingly sinister. She is also growing concerned about Ellen's writing project about a murder mystery that appears to be based on real life events but her search for more information leads to one dead end after another. Believing all of these events are somehow linked, Justine begins her own investigation but will she uncover the truth before it is too late?
The premise of A Game for All the Family is certainly unique but the execution of the story falls a little flat. The chapters alternate between the present day events and Ellen's story and while, initially both story arcs are interesting, there is little progression in either storyline. The dual storylines are written in two distinct voices but Ellen's murder mystery is so incredibly implausible that it eventually detracts from the main storyline. With each incredulous plot twist, the novel becomes a convoluted mess of highly improbable coincidences.
All in all, this latest release by Sophie Hannah's is an entertaining but overly long and somewhat bizarre mystery that readers will have to suspend disbelief to enjoy.
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LibraryThing member Bruyere_C
A woman's confessional-type narrative interwoven with the macabre story authored (or not?) by her teenage daughter, plus winks and nods to unreliable narrators, locked-room mysteries, and Agatha Christie — maybe not the best resolution but a fun, unputdownable weekend read.
LibraryThing member Nooiniin
I can hardly credit I actually finished this, I guess it was mainly because I wanted to refuse to believe anybody (author, editor, publishing house, the whole team of, presumably, professionals who should know better than, and get paid not to, inflict such pure silliness on their audience) could
I can suspend disbelief with the best of them, however, a solid basis to get me started (relatable characters carrying out marginally believable actions, a dignus vindice nodus - problem worth solving), is that really too much to ask? It's not even that the writing was terrible, it was OK, even funny in places, it seems more that the author could not be arsed to make the effort to render a half-decent story. What a waste!
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have the brass neck to present their readers with that kind of non-solution to this non-mystery without suspense, plot twist nor, ultimately, sense. I can suspend disbelief with the best of them, however, a solid basis to get me started (relatable characters carrying out marginally believable actions, a dignus vindice nodus - problem worth solving), is that really too much to ask? It's not even that the writing was terrible, it was OK, even funny in places, it seems more that the author could not be arsed to make the effort to render a half-decent story. What a waste!
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LibraryThing member Carol420
It's the story of a London TV producer who’s retired to Devon to get away from it all is now being terrorized by an unknown someone who offers no name but reveals every fault in the lives of two families, one of them is her own. Another " victim"...an opera singer Alex Colley. While he and his
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wife slowly move in traffic his wife silently hears in her head... “My name is Justine Merrison and I do "Nothing.” No more early morning meetings, no more dealing with strangers, no more guessing about anything. She doesn't even react with any sense of alarm when Alex teasingly tells her and Ellen, their 14-year-old daughter, that they’ve changed plans and decided to move into a random house he points out on the side of the highway. Noting can disturb her quite selective intensity. Forward...four months: Though, she’s disturbed by a series of calls from a woman she doesn't recognize and who refuses to identify herself, but says she knows why Justine, whom she insists on calling “Sandie,” has moved outside Kingswear. She insists that this "Sandie" go back to London. Ellen seems to have settled into the Beaconwood School. She has written a story about a family whose youngest daughter is a multiple murderer and then becomes a murder victim herself. But Ellen’s "honeymoon" with Beaconwood ends abruptly when her best friend, George Donbavand, is expelled for stealing a coat that she had given him. Things become worse when Justine goes to the school to try to explain that George had been given the coat only to have the head teacher Lesley Griffiths tell her that there ever was a student named Geoge Donbavand. Soon the deepening mystery forces Justine to confront the real reason she had left her old job and her old life in the first place. Plenty of shivery of second sights. Even after the last page ends you won’t soon forget this nightmare within a nightmare. Show Less
Language
Original language
English
Original publication date
2015
ISBN
1444776045 / 9781444776041
Other editions
A Game for All the Family by Sophie Hannah (Paperback)