REFUGE by Gillian White

Gillian White writes spooky, psychological thrillers that will have you turning pages eagerly to the end. And the ending will usually make you squirm. She very skillfully manipulates the normal and ordinary into something nightmarish.

Shelley is a single mom, struggling to raise six kids under the age of 12. When her oldest son, Joey, is believed to have committed a crime, the police come to question him. His friends all put the blame of the incident on him, and as the situation spirals out of control, Joey is detained by the police and Shelley and her remaining children are moved to a place of safety, away from the growing anger and hostility from the townsfolk towards her and her family.

Shelley steadfastly believes Joey to be innocent and that his friends are lying through their teeth and trying to shift the blame of what they did onto her son. She believes herself to be a good mother and that her kids are happy, well-adjusted children and she flatly refuses to believe that Joey is a problem child, in spite of all the mounting evidence against him. She cannot see herself the way other people see her.

Meanwhile her other children have been fostered out to a couple, the Boltons, who live on a quiet, secluded, remote farm. While they wait for their day in court, Shelley joins her children at the Boltons'farm. She is amazed at the difference already noticeable in her kids, they are happy, obedient, with none of their usual fussing, content in their new lifestyle, even though she herself doesn't really agree with Mrs Bolton's method of discipline and child-rearing, it seems to work.

But something about the kindly but simple Boltons'and their strictly routine way of life makes Shelley very uneasy. Little things, not easily dismissed, increase her uneasiness, and she comes to the realisation that her life is in danger.

Was she really such a bad mother?

The ending is frightening and inevitable but also, I felt, a little anti-climatic.

Happy reading!