Huge thanks to Jenny Platt for inviting me to take part in the blog tour for First Born by Will Dean. I’m not doing many tours these days due to writing commitments but this was one book I could not pass on. Before I give you my review, here’s the blurb.
The Blurb
THE LAST THING A TWIN EXPECTS IS TO BE ALONE …
Molly lives a quiet, contained life in London. Naturally risk averse, she gains comfort from security and structure. Every day the same.
Her identical twin Katie is her exact opposite: gregarious and spontaneous. They used to be inseparable, until Katie moved to New York a year ago. Molly still speaks to her daily without fail.
But when Molly learns that Katie has died suddenly in New York, she is thrown into unfamiliar territory. Katie is part of her DNA. As terrifying as it is, she must go there and find out what happened. As she tracks her twin’s last movements, cracks begin to emerge. Nothing is what it seems. And a web of deceit is closing around her.
My Review
I was quite surprised when two proof copies of First Born turned up – one with a red cover for Katie, and a black one for Molly. ‘Are the books exactly the same?’ was my first thought. ‘Does the black cover start with Molly’s story and the red with Katie’s?’ Then I thought the printers would probably have a meltdown over that. Thankfully, I soon discovered that one was to keep and one to give away. So I gave the red copy to a friend who’s a huge fan of Will Dean’s.
Molly is the quieter of the twin sisters. Cautious, health and safety conscious, risk adverse. A planner who goes beyond normal detail. Katie is the adventurous one, spreading her wings by moving to New York. Or rather, she was. When Molly hears of her sister’s death, she flies out to the US to join her parents.
This is quite a departure from Dean as he moves away from the forests of Sweden and the Fens of England into the urban landscape of New York City. I’ve never been to New York but I felt I could use this book like a Baedeker to guide me through the streets and blocks. It’s the little details like the brass plaques sunk into the paving stones outside New York Public Library that add authenticity. As we see the city through Molly’s eyes, it moves from an unknown scary place, to one she learns to inhabit as she seeks the truth about her sister’s death.
It’s not just the landscape that’s changed though. Dean still has first person female point of view (something he does ridiculously well as a male writer) but the style is different. We’re in Highsmith territory here and I was never quite sure where the story was going. I liked this as it kept me on my toes, wondering what was going to happen. Some things I guessed, others I didn’t. And the reveals aren’t always big and showy, but a simple sentence embedded in a paragraph that makes you stop and re-read to make sure you got it right.
First Born is a claustrophobic, intense novel which I thoroughly enjoyed. It’ll be interesting to see where Will Dean goes from here.
About the Author
Will Dean grew up in the East Midlands and had lived in nine different villages before the age of eighteen. After studying Law at the LSE and working in London, he settled in rural Sweden where he built a house in a boggy clearing at the centre of a vast elk forest, and it’s from this base that he compulsively reads and writes. His debut novel, Dark Pines, was selected for Zoe Ball’s Book Club, shortlisted for the Guardian Not the Booker prize and named a Daily Telegraph Book of the Year. Red Snow was published in January 2019 and won Best Independent Voice at the Amazon Publishing Readers’ Awards, 2019. Black River was shortlisted for the Theakstons Old Peculier Award in 2021. The Last Thing to Burn was released to widespread acclaim in January 2021.
joykluver 