THE SEARCH PARTY

An idyllic glamping weekend in Cornwall turns nightmarish in Richell’s tense thriller.

It’s the May Day holiday weekend. Max and Annie Kingsley have invited old college friends Dominic Davies, Kira de Silva, Jim Miller, and Suze Miller, along with their families, down to the Cornish coast for the soft launch of their new Wildernest glamping business. Not long before, much to the surprise of the old gang, the couple abandoned their London careers as successful architects in search of a quieter life with Kip, their adopted 12-year-old son. The six friends had last seen each other at Kira’s 40th birthday party more than a year earlier, and unresolved tensions raised by Kira’s angry meltdown that night simmer beneath the surface of a cheery reunion. But after Dominic violently breaks up an altercation between Kip and Phoebe, his 6-year-old daughter, over a purloined marshmallow, the mood among the adults darkens along with the weather. Ominous clouds soon break into a ferocious storm that cuts the group off from outside help just as secrets are revealed and one of the party's members disappears. While this scenario has been used many times before (see Sean Dolittle’s Device Free Weekend, 2023), Richell’s fifth novel cleverly plants numerous red herrings and skillfully juggles the multiple points of view and timelines to build white-knuckled suspense and keep readers guessing. The wild Cornish landscape adds to the eerie mood. With the character of Kip, the author could easily have relied on the troubled-adoptee-who-wants-to-destroy-his-family trope but instead, she draws a sensitive portrait of an abused, misunderstood child and the adoptive parents who struggle to love him.

An engrossing, twisty read.