I can't say i didn't enjoy this book because I did. The writing was very good and kept you reading but I felt there was too much of a rush for a happy ending when there were other loose ends that could have been finished off.

A deeply unsettling and sinister read. Crouch avoids falling into the complete Single White Female/Home Invasion cliche although at times you think she is heading straight for it. I had very little sympathy for any of the characters, including the children, and at times found myself wishing something bad would happen to them all. It seemed to me that Crouch was deliberately doing this, I felt increasingly ambiguous about Rose and that we were not being let into all her story but getting what she wanted us to know - if the book had been written in the first person I would have considered her an unreliable narrator. Crouch builds the atmosphere and the tension slowly with the odd shocking incident but avoiding piling on the grand guignol. At the end I was left wondering who exactly the cuckoo was. I see other reviewers appear to have treated this as a more straightforward crime novel, I'm not so sure that this is what Crouch intended and in many ways I hope it's not. A gripping, sinister and unsettling read just don't expect to like any of them.

A deeply unsettling and sinister read. Crouch avoids falling into the complete Single White Female/Home Invasion cliche although at times you think she is heading straight for it. I had very little sympathy for any of the characters, including the children, and at times found myself wishing something bad would happen to them all. It seemed to me that Crouch was deliberately doing this, I felt increasingly ambiguous about Rose and that we were not being let into all her story but getting what she wanted us to know - if the book had been written in the first person I would have considered her an unreliable narrator. Crouch builds the atmosphere and the tension slowly with the odd shocking incident but avoiding piling on the grand guignol. At the end I was left wondering who exactly the cuckoo was. I see other reviewers appear to have treated this as a more straightforward crime novel, I'm not so sure that this is what Crouch intended and in many ways I hope it's not. A gripping, sinister and unsettling read just don't expect to like any of them.

The title - Cuckoo - and the tag line - Their first mistake was inviting her in ... - appear to give away the whole plot to the book. To a certain degree, they do, you have a pretty good idea when you pick up the book the way the story is going to go. The story started out well and just as expected. Rose gets a phone call from her childhood friend Polly, her husband has been killed in a car accident. Rose's instinct is to invite Polly and her two sons to stay, despite her husband being vehemently opposed, which is a little strange but still in the realms of believability at this stage. The story progresses well, we find that the principle characters of Polly and her now dead husband Christos and Rose and her husband Gareth have a history stretching back over 20 years. Polly knows things about Rose that no one else knows, not even her husband, and gradually the reader discovers her background. The tension builds very well to the dramatic conclusion, which was unexpected but which personally I found it to be a bit of a let down. It was hard to like any of the principle adult characters and the more I read the more I disliked them. I felt really sorry for the children, but they were really only tools for the story and not particular characters to get behind when reading a story like this. It was certainly a quick read and it might appeal to readers who like authors like Sophie Hannah. Not a read I would necessarily recommend to friends though.