Thank you to Random House UK, Sadie Jones and NetGalley for the opportunity to read The Snakes.
This was a roller-coaster of a novel, simply because it was difficult to pin down the real theme. By the time I reached the ending I decided The Snakes were those who preyed on money because it was all they cared about rather than the actual snakes at the property. Bea and Dan are a strange couple because I couldn't work out whether they actually liked each other. I feel Bea loved him, his beauty is referred to more than once against her own plainness, but he doesn't seem to return it and seems irritated by her. Beatrice has risen above her parents adoration of wealth with a decision to live as frugally and as 'normally' as possible, yet later on she is persuaded by Dan to dig into her trust fund because he almost persuades her it's the only way he'll hang around. Is he a snake too? i think he is, and he is as guilty of the desire for money as Bea's parents. I also feel that her wish to do good in the world as a psychotherapist is brought into question because she allows her mother's abuse of Alex, her brother, to go unpunished. Would she not have wanted Viv to be brought to justice after what she did to her seemingly harmless, or at least a danger only to himself, brother? Having said all of that this is a novel that makes you think. The ending was pretty horrific and wasn't the one I'd expected, simply because there was no real answer to the question. The love of money seems to win out here, and it's fine for it to do so because we live in a world where it happens all the time. This is a complicated read, but I believe it is written in a way that makes the reader want to continue to the end. I've read too many that don't!

"Too rich and too poor were slippery creatures, they were always out of reach."

And so sets the heart of Sadie Jones' latest offering about money vs love and happiness; "It wasn't the love of money that was the root of all evil, only the love of it above other things. Like fire, it could be a good servant."

The daughter of a slippery multi-millionaire, Beatrice, lives a deliberately quiet, contained and frugal life in a small Holloway flat with a large London mortgage, and her husband-Dan. Having embarked on a European adventure in their battered Peugeot, they stop in to see Bea's brother, Alex, in his cavernous, run-down and disquietingly unoccupied hotel. They go no further.

It is unclear what genre of book Jones was aiming for here. Part family drama, part fable, part crime, part thriller and, at times, even horror-it reads like a mash-up of tales in which the reader never quite comes to terms with who they are supposed to side with.

I found myself frustrated by Bea's inability to address the glaring (even blinding or SCREAMING) issue of her parents' abuse and abandonment of her brother and frankly a little dumbfounded by her floundering relationship with Dan who-despite her evident discomfort concerning her parents' wealth and the barrier that presents between them and the world- is groomed by his father-in-law.

Furthermore, the repeated references to Dan's beauty versus Bea's frumpiness, their own (and everyone else's) awareness, suggested some further window of meaning that was forever blurred to me. Surely, it is not as trite as inner beauty trumping outward appearance. I truly hope not.

"They were two new people, the ugly rich girl, and her good-looking husband. She had always known she wasn't strong enough to fight wealth. It was bigger and more beautiful, and it was fierce."

I am grateful to net-galley and the publisher for sending me a copy in return for an honest review.

From the description I really looked forward to reading this, my first by the author but I have to be honest and say I had trouble getting into it. I just couldn't relate to any of the characters and found myself really not caring what happened to them and gave up half way through. What about the snakes - the first mention of them and the main characters didn't seem at all fazed, bothered or alarmed by them which to me given the situation they found themselves in just didn't seem real, maybe if I had finished the story this would have become clearer.
Thank you NetGalley and to the publisher for giving me the opportunity to try this but it really wasn't to my liking.

I have read all of Sadie Jones' books and looked forward to this, her latest, set mostly in rural France. However I found this a disappointing read, not helped by a poorly edited ARC. Bea and Dan are a happy young couple living in London who decide to take time out to rethink their priorities. On a trip to Europe they visit Bea's brother Alex and the secrets and tensions start to appear. This could have been good but none of the characters were engaging or sympathetic. Bea goes from being a mild mannered quiet psychotherapist to expositional diatribes against the system. The French police are portrayed as unprofessional and incompetent for no apparent reason. The author's characters tend to be upper middle class, no problem in itself, but in this novel the plot and characters have little interest.
I received a complimentary ARC of this book from the publisher via Net Galley in return for an honest review.

In complete contrast to the current fashion for uplifting novels at the heart of The Snakes is a very dysfunctional family who bring disaster to themselves and each other. The dreamlike quality of the writing made it difficult to engage fully with the characters but the denouement was so shocking in its brutality I was glad that I was at a distance from them. A novel you could only read once that’s very hard to discuss without spoilers.

A book that is hard to place - is it a psychological thriller, family saga or literary fiction? Perhaps some combination of the above, though this means I would struggle to know who to recommend it to. Some intriguing moments but no real hook. The version I read needed significant editing which hampered my enjoyment somewhat.

What a mash-up of a novel! The beginning is slow and I didn't find Jones's prose as stellar as I have in the past. It takes a while for the plot to get going and even the characterization is somehow a bit blurry in comparison with Jones's usual scalpel-like precision. Then it all suddenly takes off with the corrupting influence of money and dysfunctional family: the nest of snakes in the attic is both entirely apposite and yet a bit crude in its obviousness. Then a death... and a final 15% or so that is nail-biting in its tension - but also a surprising departure for Jones.

Jones is so versatile thinking back across her books - for me this doesn't have the delicate emotional subtlety of The Outcast or Small Wars (my favourite), but may open up a new audience of literary thriller readers: 3.5 stars.

I do not know how to review this without giving anything away. I did not have any expectations as to what genre it belonged to and only scanned the blurb briefly. Suffice it to say that I was very surprised and impressed by the quality of the writing and the way the plot unfolded, keeping me gripped throughout. I would recommend others to read it blind as I did.