The Cabin by Natasha Preston

When I requested The Cabin by Natasha Preston launched last Sept 6th by Sourcebooks I imagined a crime book with a lot of tension and with a lot of suspense. Being an Agatha Christie fan my favorite crime stories the ones set in a house or in a defined location where a group of people for a reason or another are involved and under investigation by a good police man and maybe an investigator like could be Poirot.
No one of them can go out til the crime is sorted out. Generally pretty soon.

Forget all of it with The Cabin It's something else. A young book where murder is lived under another perspective.

Although a scaring murder consumed in a cabin the story is more complicated than at first it can appears.

First of all: the book reminds me the writing-style of some American and British friends I met online 14 years ago so that's why I read this book with big pleasure.

There is a freshness able to by-pass also the biggest tragedies of life. It's important trust me for keeping the mind healthy.

This book will keep your mind fresh, active, because it's vivacious and plenty of characters and diversified situations. No boring time, no descriptions, a lot of dialogues, some ingenuity here and there but positivity in motion.

What you will read is a complicated story of a murder but not only a murder. You will meet five apparent normal protagonists who drink, drug themselves, one is bisexual, another live conflictual relationship with his mom, another aborted at 15 years...A book where normality is just the pale idea and the surface of what reality is.

There is never never a big perception of tragedy or death and this is amazing.

The homicide that should be lived as the biggest and most horrible crime on this Earth lived as if it would be normal in the scheme of life, and with the philosophy of: "Let's going on for trying to sort out this mess." All alone. Without help. Police becomes an unnecessary nerve.

The story: Josh decides to organize with his friends a week-end in the cabin of his family. Mackenzie, Kyle, Courtney, Aaron, Josh, Blake, Megan all together for a week-end in the country-side.
Josh is not loved by them but although their contrasting feelings, also because their common friends Tilly and Gigi disappeared 8 months before in a terrible incident and Josh the main one "accused" for it, they decide to participate.

The author insists in the heavy drinking of the various protagonists all 18 years old, during the week-end.

In fact no one will hear anything when two protagonists of this story, Josh and Courtney, his girlfriend, are killed stabbed various times with a knife in the kitchen of the cabin. The cabin is quiet big and all the protagonists gone for the alcohol and maybe something else. They all sleep profoundly.

After the murder it appeared to me that the main problem were not two corpses in the kitchen or the arrival of the police or of an ambulance or the evidences that maybe police men and scientific could find, no, but the drinking of the protagonists seen also the insistence of the author of the book regarding this point and the discovery of these two corpses lived by the protagonists as a dream/nightmare.

The police man in the person of Mr.Wright will be in the entire book just a pale and insignificant character without too much intelligence for discovering who had killed who.
The key of everything for sorting out apparently (because the message of this book is clear: reality is never the one we see but there is always something else hidden somewhere) this story will be Mackenzie with Blake. Blake is the misunderstood brother of Josh. The  police men focus the attention on him.

More than to focusing on the homicide in itself, this story will reveal the personalities of the various characters, and Blake and Mackenzie will discover surprisingly that they didn't know at all the people with which they hanged out with.
Mackenzie firstly. Blake is the black sheep of the family, the one no one love or want to see around and so also for this reason he has a weird character.

As a crime novel The Cabin by Natasha Preston is young, fresh, sometimes ingenuous but surely very interesting.

I loved to read it with all my heart and I suggest it to youngsters and adults although it contains sensitive topics like alcohol abuse and uncommon drugs. I see very strong positive sides in the vision of positive dialogues and lightness of the various characters. Plenty of problems unable maybe to sorting out all their demons but able to fight with all themselves for surviving and going on in life. Mackenzie character surely the best one. I loved it a lot like also her romantic relationship with Blake. Positive also her family.



Anna Maria Polidori