P. Pomare book and one I really enjoyed, this one is set in Melbourne during the lockdowns and this is a first for me. Pomare’s protagonists are authentic character conglomerations, which draws the reader further into this crime tale. There are lots of different twists in this mystery, thriller, my mind had all different thoughts trying to sort out what was happening, and the ending was not what I expected at all, a short story that I did in one sitting, it is fast paced and has lots happening in, characters that add to the story.

Twists come out of nowhere and the high drama of the final few chapters is edge-of-the-seat stuff' New Zealand Women's Weekly'A twisty small-town mystery with a protagonist I didn't want to let go' IAN RANKIN'The pay-off is criminally good . Lou is scared and worried but can't go to the police because she has secrets of her own that she can't let Samuel find out.A woman races against time to find her son in this tense and twisty thriller by the Top Ten bestselling author of The Wrong Woman. A story that was first released as an Audible exclusive, this latest Pomare offering is fast paced, incredibly twisted and oh so tense. Set in suburban Victoria during the 2020/2021 covid lockdowns, the story centres around Lou and her son Samuel. The plot twist was great and the book ends up getting really gritty and dark but I don’t think the plot twist is worth putting yourself through everything before that. This was the most ridiculous book, once’s you finish it you understand why characters are certain ways and it does make sense sense but that doesn’t change the way I felt about the first 80% of the book.

But this is another great read from Pomare and the sneak peek at his next book (included in the paperback copy) will whet your appetite for his 2024 release. Set in Melbourne during Covid lockdown, unfortunately there weren’t really any likable characters in this book, but I did enjoy the twist which I didn’t see coming, which also helped to explain certain character traits.

At just under 200 pages long, Home Before Night is a fast paced and entertaining read, but also much shorter than I expected, with the paperback padded with a 100 page preview of Pomare’s forthcoming novel, Seventeen Years Later, to be published in 2024.

I feel conflicted about the ending as I had to suspend my belief (and not necessarily in a good way). After reading almost all of Pomare's books, I have never been able to work out the twist endings and this novella is no different. But Lou as brought Samuel up to never lie (which is an underlying theme throughout this story), and now he's disappeared.Pomare does a great job at re-planting readers back into the time of curfews and lockdowns, with brief forays outside to exercise or healthcare and the like. It was safe to say I had my seatbelt buckled in tight while reading Home Before Night, I knew that a huge jolt to my system was coming! In this page-turning thriller, all is not as it seems, and the truth is a lot darker and in many ways more human than we could ever imagine. Having a 19 month and 6 month old babies, and also being raised as a Mormon, I had multiple points of relevance with the book AND those twist….