Book Review: "The School Reunion" by Shalini Boland

I have found more Kindle Unlimited psychological thriller fiction and yes, this is the writer of The Birthday Party, which I absolutely loved. The School Reunion is a shorter book but it is not any worse off than the first. About a woman named Chloe who is invited to her secondary school reunion in Bournemouth, we are taken on a whirlwind through her life before it. She initially thinks she isn't going to go because of the divorce she recently went through making her self-image a bit unstable. But, after receiving a bunch of messages from an unknown source saying that she should not turn up, she makes it her business to go to the reunion. But who knew that a ton of secrets from the past, including a suicide, would be dug up only for someone else to end up buried? Shalini Boland creates a haunting atmosphere where we can't see who's haunting Chloe or why, but with our other narrator - Dean - we might see how the ones manipulating the narrative were not who we thought at all. It's all so terrifying and tense!

The school reunion is coming up and Chloe's relationship with her mother is tense. Her mother wants her to go but the anonymous emailer wants Chloe to stay put. Chloe ultimately decides to go but before that, we are introduced to a whole host of problems that have plagued her life. These include her messy divorce, her dead end job and her tense relationship with her mother who always seems to talk negatively to her. On the other side of the narrative there is Chloe's past. She was a poor girl in a rich school, her mother paying tooth and nail for the chance for her daughter to have a better life. However, her school days were plagued with bullying and so, when she starts going out with Chris (the popular kid) whilst at school - the new-found popularity may have gone to her head in ways we could never imagine. But in the present, Chloe won't say what happened, only that she never wants to see Chris again.

The other narrative is by Dean. Dean's wife has left him for another man and he has been left with his young son who can't understand why his mother hasn't come home. It seems as if Dean's only concern is keeping his son happy and so, now that he's in financial trouble - he is desperately requiring a payment from a recent client. When that client refuses to pay because he's an entitled p.o.s, Dean chooses to confront him about it. After being slapped with a non-molestation order, Dean takes it one step further: he will dress up and go to the secondary school reunion with a knife, somewhere he knows his client, Chris, is going to be that night. Shalini Boland is connecting things together for us, but there's still a few holes left out of what is going on. We know that Dean's sister died when she was young and yet, we don't know exactly what is going on with Dean. Does Dean think Chris killed his sister? No, he doesn't. It's something that you could probably say is slower and more painful. Boland is perfectly presenting us with the jigsaw, as the story moves on, we realise that this actually has nothing to do with Chris at all - in fact, it even has very little to do with Dean. Dare I say it? "The call is coming from inside the house."

Anyways, I loved this book. Yes, the ending was a bit odd and off-putting because logically, how could it have happened and...I am not going to say anything else because it will give the story away. One thing I really liked is that there weren't too many characters and the story was simple. Yes, it could have required a bit more atmosphere and could have been a bit longer but the story itself was simple and it didn't send us on long and convoluted nowheres. Shalini Boland's narrative almost feels claustrophobic, as if we are living inside the character's head. Oh, and there's a third narrative...it's set in the past...and it's neither Chloe nor Dean who are the protagonists of that story.

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