GO TO MY GRAVE 

Bolo Books' Top Reads pick 2018

Book Bub pick for "the biggest mysteries of Fall 2018"

Donna Weaver has put everything into The Breakers. Now it waits – freshly painted, richly furnished, filled with flowers – for the first guests to arrive.

But as they roll up – these couples and cousins, all in their forties – each one discovers they’ve been here before. Sasha had his sixteenth birthday at scruffy old Knockbreak House, as it was. Peach started a life of boozing there. Rosalie and Paul started the life they still share. Buck and Jennifer had one night they barely remember. They’re the lucky ones.

Because the party that started with peach schnapps and Postman’s Knock ended with a girl walking into the sea.

Sasha’s parents hustled the children out of the spotlight. And as for the kids themselves? They made three vows of silence – “lock it in a box, stitch my lips and go to my grave”.

But one of them has broken the pact. Someone engineered this weekend back at the scene of the drowning. Someone is playing games, locking boxes, stitching lips. And the third vow is waiting.

Discussion Questions

1. Donna is dead serious about her career in hospitality and her new business venture. Do you think she's in the right job?

2. What would you have done differently if you had been setting up The Breakers?

3. There are three mother-daughter relationships in the book, all very different. Which do you find most interesting or realistic, according to your experiences?

4. There is an accustion of bullying early on in the novel. Do you think it's valid? How easy do you find it to draw a line around the definition of bullying?

5. Some readers have said that they find the Mowbray-Buchanan-Leslie clan members unlikable. What do you make of them, as children and as adults?

6. When you reach the end of the novel do you find that the past expalins the present or are you left with questions?

7. #MeToo has lifted the lid on many painful episodes in womens' pasts and brought firmley suppressed memories back to the surface. If you feel safe and supported enough in your group, can you remember any incidents that took place in your young life that you have re-analysed in the last couple of years?

8. On a lighter note, what would an American tourist, used to US B&Bs, make of The Breakers?