Book Review: "The Unknown" by Riley Sager

Here are some of my other reviews on Riley Sager's books. There may be more but you can take a look at these in the meantime...

So, you can imagine, The Unknown was unmissable for me. It seems like the kind of novel I was wanting Sager to write the entire time. With a talent for atmosphere and language, Riley Sager's ability to create a sense of place that makes us feel uneasy is basically unrivalled at this point (well, if you've read anything by CJ Tudor then perhaps, it is rivalled, but they are two very different authors). The Unknown feels more 'urban legend' and historical than the other novels I have read by this same author and honestly, it is probably my favourite out of all of them.

Daisy lives on New Avalon after being brought there by a new family. Once there, she starts to experience some odd things - it's 1926 and thus, she is a little out of place being a well-spoken woman. Doubting that her fellow women like her very much, there's something haunting the island too. Some sort of darkness was definitely taking over and Daisy can understand none of it. 100 years' later, Marin is taking a job as an actress on a movie set and about New Avalon, Marin herself has been cast to play Daisy. The story is about five women who went missing on the island in 1926 in circumstances that are still completely shrouded in mystery. Riley Sager brings these two storylines together in bits and pieces, slowly revealing different things about each and every character in a way that is both uncertain and unreliable. It is absolutely brilliant. I loved every second of it.

Moving more into the intensities of the book, we get a feeling that whatever happened in 1926 is linked to now by the events - women start to disappear. Marin finds symbols all over the trees in the woods, and the actresses on the movie set Marin is working on go missing, vanishing into thin air. Nobody seems to know what's going on and, the director and the lead actress decide to hold a seance to see what dark force is lingering above their movie. Well, I can say if you told me I would be acting in a movie set on an island where women had gone missing and nobody had ever been found and atop of this, there are no inhabitants anywhere to be found - then I would be running in the opposite direction. Marin receiving a great amount of money for her part in this seems nice until you realise there is so much more to this damn story. From Daisy's diary to the fact that whoever she is staying with might not be who they seem, Marin tries to uncover what is actually happening before another person disappears or dies.

Riley Sager's The Unknown is perhaps the best book Sager has written yet. It is a brilliant contemporary thriller with lots of supernatural elements that constantly have false bottoms. In a Russian-Doll structure, the more you uncover, the more you want to know. Once one question is answered, another one is dug from beneath the cottages. It is atmosphere and narrative quirks made flesh - I adored reading this from start to finish so much that I sat there and read the whole thing in one sitting. Very clearly this is Riley Sager's best work so far. I cannot wait for another book by this author.

All in all, I can honestly say that if you're looking for a spooky read where you think you know what is going on but then again, you don't, and even when you think you have found out the ending, you haven't - then this book is definitely for you. It's not so much a 'twist' in the story as much as a 'were you actually paying attention at all?' you will definitely therefore need to go back and reread a few things. Not everything is black and white, but this book states that there are events existing in a grey area. On one hand, we think we know who the villain is... but then what happens when basically everyone, in their own way, is a damn villain?