The Behaviour of Moths
Now that Vivien is coming home, long forgotten memories are stirred up and the secrets that have separated the sisters threaten to disrupt much more than Ginny’s carefully ordered world.
Told through Ginny’s unforgettable voice, this brilliant debut novel tells us what families are capable of doing to each other – especially in the name of love.
Reviews
This is a dark book, but an extremely funny one, recalling Mark Haddon and Barbara Trapido by turns. A brilliantly paced debut.
WHATEVER HAPPENED TO BABY JANE comes to Devon, in Adams's gothic tale of madness, sibling rivalry and lepidoptera... Adams is a skilful, entertaining storyteller.
Damaged families, psychological drama and ghosts from the past abound. Adams succeeds in carefully building up an atmosphere of penumbral suspense, creeping towards a tense climax.
A striking debut novel... a convincing, true voice.
Ingenious… twisting and teasing… The book's real fascination [is] watching the author play her mischievous game of bluff with the reader.
As vivid and disturbing as anything you'll read all year.
Delightfully refreshing... It's a subtle, fascinating and gently powerful performance.
A chilling contemporary gothic... This genuinely eerie thriller is guaranteed to appeal to the same wide readership that propelled Diane Setterfield's suspenseful THE THIRTEENTH TALE to the top of the best-seller lists.
An intricately crafted story, told with just the right balance of claustrophobia and compassion.
An atmospheric addition to the 'mess with your head' school of fiction.
Disturbingly fab.
Totally compelling.
One of my favourite books at the moment... It's a great story.
This book has got everyone talking, and with good reason... With echoes of Daphne du Maurier, this is a fine, utterly engrossing read that will have your imagination working overtime.
Adams has produced a clever take on the gothic thriller.
Poppy Adams keeps the reader pinned to the page.
Superbly written.
This gripping novel is the read of the summer.
A chilling and disturbing novel.
Beautifully staged... Mesmerising and unsettling.
Chilling... an eerie and accomplished debut.
Engrossing.
A taut, tense tale of the ties that bind - sometimes a little too tightly.
This lyrical and haunting story of two sisters, their troubling past, and the terrible secrets they each want buried will stay with you long after you close the book. A wonderful book loaded with twists and turns that come straight from the heart.
Powered by the same sort of confidently rendered literary suspense that propelled Donna Tartt’s 1992 thriller, THE SECRET HISTORY, onto best-seller lists… It is one of the achievements of this novel that Ms. Adams makes Ginny such an intriguingly unreliable narrator that the reader is continually kept off balance.
With its stylish prose, taut plotting and dark psychology, [THE BEHAVIOUR OF MOTHS] is reminiscent of the best books by Ruth Rendell's alter ego, Barbara Vine... remarkably assured.
A suspenseful, provocative, deliberately ambiguous tale.
Steeped in both emotion and science… a novel laden with pathos and genuine emotional resonance.
Deliciously creepy."<br />
A triumph.
Layers of increasingly disturbing family secrets are gradually revealed in this beguiling and chilling story with a brilliant narration.
A rewarding read.
Couldn’t stop reading till I finished it at 3.30am. What a story.
An outstanding debut from an exceptional new voice in fiction.
A haunting first novel.
A gothic mystery that keeps you pinned to the page... Hitchcock-style menace.
Cognitive dissonance is what drives the plot, and that makes this quite a bold first novel.
An engrossing atmosphere of gothic mystery.
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