THE WEEKEND AWAY

4 stars out of 5

If you like stories in which you're never sure which characters are on the up and up, you'll probably love this one. It begins when besties Kate and Orla head off for a weekend of fun in Lisbon. They've done similar adventures before, but for Orla, this one's a real treat: after a trying time with fertility treatments, she and her husband Rob have finally become parents, upending her life (mostly in a good way) and making her more eager than usual to get out in the world.

So when Kate insists on hitting the night life, Orla doesn't resist - until Kate starts to get a bit carried away and hits on a couple of guys in a bar. For Orla, that's all she wrote until morning, when she wakes up in a fog with virtually no memories of what happened but a feeling that something went terribly wrong. Worse, she can't even ask Kate what happened; she's gone missing. But when she starts asking questions, no one - not Orla's husband Rob, who's back home in London watching their infant daughter, nor the Lisbon police - will take Orla seriously. Only one person, the women's Uber driver Konstandin, believes as Orla does - that something terrible has happened to Kate. But really, he's a total stranger, and one who may have ties to the Russian mafia as well. So can he be trusted? 

Little by little, readers learn what really happened and who did what and when - and often, it's surprising. So, too, is the ending - which if I'm being totally honest, wasn't very satisfying to me. But it does fit with the rest of the story, which I very much enjoyed, so far be it from me to complain. Thanks to the publisher, via NetGalley, for providing me with a pre-release copy to read and review. 

The Weekend Away by Sarah Alderson (Avon, July 2020); 332 pp.