The Scarlet Dress

De: Louise Douglas

Narrado por: Imogen Church

Duración: 11 h y 17 m

Resumen del Editor

Alice Lang was wearing her favourite scarlet dress when she disappeared 25 years ago, and her memory still casts a long shadow.

The past was like water. Once the tide turned, you couldn't hold it back.

In the long, hot summer of 1995, 22-year-old Alice Lang rents a caravan on a holiday park on the outskirts of the lively holiday resort of Severn Sands. She befriends Marnie, a shy, damaged little girl whose father is the park's caretaker and whose mother died a few months earlier. Will, whose mother runs the bar, falls in love with Alice and is unbearably jealous of anyone else she sees. Tensions rise until one evening Alice disappears from her caravan. She's never seen again, and only her scarlet dress is found washed up on the shore.

A quarter of a century later, the town is run-down, and nobody comes there anymore. Mr and Mrs deVillars, former owners of the holiday park, have passed the failing business onto their son, Guy, who promptly sells the land for development. Builders clearing the land to create an expanse of executive homes uncover human bones. It has to be Alice.

Will and Marnie’s lives were entirely shaped by what happened that summer, and now that Alice has been found, they must struggle to pin down their memories, to escape the secrets of the past, the lies they told and the unbearable guilt they're both carrying.

They need to find out what happened to Alice. Who killed her? And why?

©2021 Louise Douglas (P)2021 Boldwood Books

Total drag

Narrator really loves to elongate each and every syllable and after a while it became irritating. Where in the world did Lucy, main character’s daughter come from? A bit of background would have been nice. Did she just drop into Marnie’s lap from the sky? Storyline would have been good if some the characters were removed and the narrator spoke in normal voice.

Obvious and Tedious Characters

If it weren’t for the wonderful reading of Imogen Church, I probably would’ve returned this book.

I solved the crime at two hours in. It was pretty obvious and so the remaining hours of this book became pretty excruciating. All the characters seemed to be in a state of arrested development. There was not much to endear them to me.

Well worth a credit

As always, Louise Douglas writes a beautifully descriptive story filled with interesting characters, dual timelines, and a fascinating coastal town in the UK...
I like this book a lot. I enjoyed the characters immensely and the story was interesting and held my attention.
Having said that, if you are checking out Louise Douglas for the first time, I would not start with this book. Rather, “In Her Shadow” is a much better representation of her best writing and storytelling.
As usual the illustrious Imogen Church knocks it out of the park. She is a star and a master of her craft. There is no better female narrator than her, I could literally listen to her recite a phone book and probably be lulled to sleep.
Bottom line, good book but not her best. It is still well worth a read...

A little bit long

I think it just has to be Ms Douglas' writing style there are times when she could have edited out 5 or 6 pages and still made her point. She also uses words, and phrases that are pretentious, what does ozone even smell like, and how did it make a difference to the plot. The story is good and I didn't guess who did it till the end but 70+ chapters come on.

Just OK

I'm quickly becoming a fan of Louise Douglas, but if I'm being honest, this one fell a little flat for me. It definitely wasn't riveting, for one thing, and for another, I feel it had a lot of plot holes. For one thing, the main girl in the story has a daughter, and we have no idea where this daughter came from. There was no need for the daughter, actually. She had no purpose, and I was sort of expecting to find out who her father was, which never happened. It was a little hard to believe that Marnie even had a daughter considering how afraid she always was, and she was mute, too. Who would she even have been able to build a strong enough relationship with to have a child when she was always afriad of everyone and couldn't talk to anybody?

Possible Spoilers: Another thing that didn't make sense is why she is mute in the first place. She didn't stop speaking after her mother passed away, so logic would lead you to believe she went through something traumatic, but that didn't happen either. I assumed she was either raped or she witnessed the murder of the girl this story is about.

The third thing that bothered me is that, in the beginning the author gave us a red herring, and to do that, she made this person sound psycho and possessive. In the end when we find out it wasn't this person, we were just magically supposed to accept that he's completely normal, and we're supposed to overlook his earlier personality.

The book wasn't terrible, and I'll still read more Louise Douglas, so if this is your first book by this author, don't give up on her! As for the narrator, she took some getting used to. She made all the men sound like "slow" oafs, and she took pauses in weird places as well as emphasizes things that didn't need to be. It was a little distracting, actually. However, at least she didn't sound like a robot.

Hope this review helps! I don't usually leave them unless I feel I haha to, and this is one of those. I wanted to give a warning that this is not this author's best work.