Out Of Her Depth: A Thrilling Richard & Judy Book Club Pick

Product Information

Thank you MIRA/Netgalley, #partner, for the advanced copy of Out of Her Depth in exchange for my honest review.

The main premise is that Rachel, who is about to start University at Cambridge in the fall, takes a summer job in Tuscany working at a hotel, hopefully to work on her Italian skills. She meets fellow co-worker Diana, who is fun-loving but has a mean streak and is brazen where Rachel is timid. She draws Rachel out of her shell, but there's a dark undercurrent to everything she does. Rachel falls hard for Sebastian, a rich guy out of her league, but he doesn't really seem interested. At the beginning of the book, we are twenty years later and find out that Sebastian has been in prison for murder, but his sentence has been overturned and he is trying to get in touch with Rachel. Who was murdered and what really happened? When our Prime Minister can’t get basic facts about energy price caps right, we’re in serious trouble. Incomprehensible that she won’t recognise the mess she’s caused and recall Parliament." These are teenagers whose lives are just about to take off. However, a course of events starts to form, and one of the end results is that Sebastian has been given a 20-year prison sentence. For the course of the book, the question remains as to who the murder victim was and what really transpired. As the book alternated between the present and the past, readers are given privy to the byplay between Rachel, Diana and Sebastian. There is a fourth player, however, and her name is Valentina. Readers will start to see how she plays into everything that happened during that hot Tuscan summer. I have never heard of Lizzy Barber before but if this is a preview of what is to come, I know I will be a big fan. I might even say this was one of my most favored books for the month of July.

By the time Truss was being interviewed by Radio Nottingham she had begun to push that there was global instability and nodded toward Vladimir Putin as an influence. I’d like to thank NetGalley and Pan Macmillan for approving me for an ARC of this book. Also special thanks to Novel Natters for buddy reading this with me. In this thrilling story delivered in rapid then and now dual timelines, one of our protagonists, Rachel Bailey, is in a toxic friendship with Diana. A summer full of opportunities is before Rachel as they both get jobs at a lovely Tuscan villa. Rachel’s growing friendship with Diana is further complicated by the fact that Rachel is rather drawn to Sebastian. Will Diana help her to win over Sebastian or will something more sinister eventually happen?

About two months later, preparing for my morning operations meeting, I received a phone call out of the blue, which completely changed my life. Scrase will executive produce alongside Barber. Brendan Fitzgerald, senior VP of international co-productions for Sony Pictures Television International Production, will oversee the project for the studio.

out of your ˈdepth

In her final interview with Radio Stoke, Truss was asked simply: "Have you taken the keys to the country and crashed the economy?" Curtis is currently in development with “Fleabag” production company Two Brothers Pictures on series “Dinosaur,” a drama series for Carnival and “Sunshine Girl,” a comedy film in development with Stigma Films. I hammered away at my laptop, completing just enough of the book to be able to enter, and literally handed my entry in on the closing day of the competition (I couriered my entry, so worried was I it wouldn’t make the deadline!). The suffocating heat, the blinding wealth, the beautiful people: it soon becomes too much, and Rachel finds herself not just out of her depth, but drowning in lies . . .

She is such a contradiction and not an interesting one. On the one hand, she wants to be part of the upper class; of the elite. She is self-conscious and insecure to always make a good impression. Yet, her comments on the elite/upper class are stand-offish, snide and even vindictive. Now that being said, it did have some good qualities. I enjoyed the scenery presented, the location for the plot of "then", the intricacies of the characters, some of the suspense aspects at a few points, & the plot potential. Barber did keep me guessing though along the way that kept me intrigued and curious because I needed to know "what happened"! Although not as tantalizing as I'd have liked & hoped, it was tasty. Thus began an extraordinary chain of events that I am still waiting to wake up from on a daily basis. The little thriller I had dabbled away at is now My Name Is Anna, and was published by Century, an imprint of Penguin Random House, in January 2019. It will be published in North America by MIRA, an imprint of Harper Collins, on 3rd September 2019. At first, this story and the mood reminded me a little of Scorpionfish by Natalie Bakopoulos. But the more I read, the more annoyed I got with Out of Her Depth.The PM was then told that by all accounts, from the former chair of the bank of England and other experts, she had "made the situation worse".

During this summer that shaped Rachel’s life twenty some years before Rachel met Diana. Diana came from a world where money was no object and Rachel became obsessed with their friendship. Rachel also began to like one of Diana’s rich crowd friends, Sebastian, and enlisted Diana’s help to get to know him but when the summer came to an end someone had died and Sebastian had goen to prison. Out of Her Depth by Lizzy Barber is a suspenseful thriller novel. The story in Out of Her Depth is one that is told by alternating timelines with one from the past, around twenty years before and one in the current time.

In an environment totally different to her own, with different rules and different expectations (at a time when you’re most impressionable) is a world that Rachel finds herself in for the summer. She works hard in Villa Medici but her earnings are soon gone as she tries to keep up with the group. She’s dazzled by the glitter and glamour, not really understanding just how shallow that world is. I did like the way this book unfolded, alternating between the present and the past, deliberately laying things out so that the reader can feel the anticipation of the events. Themes of obsession and toxic relationships abound. The ending had some great surprises, yet I thought it went a step too far, one of those "one twist too many" traps that writers sometimes fall into unfortunately. The characters are quite unlikable, even those I liked at first I eventually grew to despise. I want to have someone to root for, so this was a bit disappointing. Need a bit of Italy in your life? With a well carved storyline that bowls along apace? Then this is for you, especially if you fancy a good read to keep you engrossed poolside (given there is a pool on the cover!). Working with the restaurants has been creative and dynamic…and has involved a certain about of writing (including a lot of press releases!), but writing has always been a creative itch I have scratched on the side.