I love a book that’s set in my home county, though I didn’t recognise the places mentioned in Stay, apart from the nearest town being Cheltenham, where I live. I was also excited to learn that the author is Writer-in-Residence for Cheltenham Festivals.

I simply adored Stay! Caitlin is both smart and naive at the same time. She knows what’s going on, but she isn’t mature enough to deal with it. And then there’s the children – thirteen-year-old Henna and five-year-old Daisy. They need her, they trust her and she is starting to love them back. Is she the only person who is trustworthy in this strange set-up?

And it is strange. Marcus and Mimi are married – or are they? You wouldn’t think so at times. They grow weed on an industrial scale in polytunnels, have secret ‘offices’ and supposedly rescue unmarried mothers. It’s the pandemic (remember that?), so the children don’t go to school, but they don’t have the internet so they can’t learn online. Then in walks Caitlin, perfectly placed to tutor them.

And she is very happy to do so until her phone disappears and no-one wants to help her find it or go into the nearest big town to get a charger or even replace it if it can’t be found. She desperately wants to tell her mum and sisters that she is OK. The only way she can contact them is by mail.

Initially there seems to be a simple reason for everything, but she soon realises that she is trapped, and not just by the pandemic. What’s more, she doesn’t even know exactly where she is if she wanted someone to come and get her. She just knows she’s in Gloucestershire, a long way from her home in Cornwall.

Stay is a slow burn, with us the reader, discovering the truth alongside Caitlin, as it becomes more terrifying and sinister. It’s a great story – I haven’t really read anything like this before.

There is also a backdrop of traditional folk songs, which Caitlin learnt from her grandmother, and sings to the girls at night, sometimes making up her own words.

Many thanks to @annecater for inviting me to be part of #RandomThingsTours

A really great and intriguing read. I loved the characters and the story. Will look out for more from this author.

This was a slow burn book with good twists . With the added mention of COVID it makes things feel relatable.

Thank you Orion publishing and NetGalley for providing an advance copy in exchange for an honest review .

This was brilliantly dark and mysterious as you turned each page you wondered while on the edge of your seat how it was going to play out. I loved the mystery behind this novel and highly recommend this for others to take a scary dark turn in there normal reading and pick up Stay by Jane Bailey.

The description of what this book is about didn't feel true to the story - I felt like there was so so much more. This kept me interested and I liked how the story line was different from anything I've read. I felt around 80% the book got a little slow and not as gripping as the beginning. Great ending and loved all the twists.

Jane Bailey is an author I have not read before. I did enjoy Caitlin’s story. Caitlin is a nineteen year old who is running away from her boyfriend and some painful betrayals, takes refuge, on the eve of the first lockdown of Covid, with a seemingly lovely family in rural Gloucestershire. Marcus, Mimi and their two daughters seem nice, if a little odd from the outset, and Caitlin agrees to stay for a while to home-school the girls now that the schools are closed. Caitlin's actions are certainly foolish at times. There’s a lot going on under the surface in and around the house, and she's soon in deeper than she ever expected, and unsure who she can trust. The book is slow moving, and brings back memories of Covid lockdown.

#netgalley

Stay is my first book by Jane Bailey. It is a fast-paced and fairly engrossing read. Nineteen year old Caitlin Polglaze abruptly leaves her ex- boyfriend and two traveling friends
to return home. News of the pandemic is getting serious and warnings against travel are already starting to appear. Caitlin is not anxious to face her family as she is embarrassed and disappointed that her trip and relationship did not go as planned. She is offered a ride by a friendly couple with two daughters, and she eagerly accepts. After spending the night, they encourage Cailin to stay on and tutor their daughters, Daisy, age 5 and Henna, 13.
As is often the case, things are not what they seem. The friendly couple seem to have many secrets, and soon Caitlyn wishes she never accepted the ride and plans to leave- also not as easy as she anticipated.
I was constantly amazed at how naive and trusting Caitlin was; she seemed so immature and gullible. It negatively impacted my enjoyment of the book. All in all though Stay is a timely and satisfying novel. 3.5 Stars.
I received an ARC through NetGalley, although appreciative, it no way impacted my review.

Spending the summer travelling seemed like the perfect idea after flunking her exams, but when those closest to Caitlin betray her, she finds herself hitchhiking home alone, heartbroken and penniless.

A smiling family pull up on the roadside and offer her to stay with them for the night. One night soon turns into two and with the country being put into lockdown, it is impossible to turn down their offer to tutor their children, especially when they are so nice. It all seems perfect.

But then a member of the household warns Caitlin to leave, and then her phone suddenly goes missing, is this family perfect after all, but by the time she realises not all may be as it seems, it may be too difficult to leave.

Stay is a suspenseful psychological thriller which will have you turning the pages right until you reach the very end. The book is set around the Covid-19 lockdown which worked very well as it foreshadowed what it means to be trapped and added an extra layer of claustrophobia to the story.

Jane Bailey wrote the characters in a believable way- Mimi and Marcus were manipulatively evil, Caitlin's mother was motherly and warm and had put aside so much for her family and that is just touching the tip of the iceberg as I saw these realistic characterisations throughout the novel! Like many other readers was I screaming at Caitlin to not be so stupid? Absolutely yes! However, she was a naive nineteen year old in trouble so the storyline is absolutely plausible.

Overall a very startling read, I was totally engrossed.

If you enjoy an 'edge of your seat' , twisty, psychological page-turner , this title will not disappoint! I found myself invested in many of the characters and I really cared about what was happening to them. The basis of the plot is not new, but Jane Bailey has added other layers that make this book feel different. Several twists and turns kept me on my toes, deciding whether everyone was really as they seemed! It took me a few chapters to get to the stage where I couldn't wait to see what happened next, but I recommend this title and really enjoyed it.
Thank you to NetGalley for the opportunity to read this in advance of publication.
The opinions given are mine.

This book was more of a rollercoaster in how I felt about it more than the actual plot. At 60 pages in all the plot points that are supposed to be suspenseful are so vague that I was starting to get bored with it. A little vagueness can be effective, a lot of vagueness can cause you to stop caring altogether. It does end up filing in some things slowly and that helps it pick up a bit but it’s a slow burn through and through. As a thriller I kept waiting for an unexpected twist or a heart stopping reveal and it just didn’t come. The story itself was good, though some of the characters were so willfully ignorant to the point it was almost intolerable. I was however genuinely invested in what happens to Henna and Daisy. And Geoff was someone I was really rooting for and hoping wouldn’t turn out to be somehow complicit! All together, it was definitely dark and sinister but just didn’t have the suspense element I had been expecting.

Thank you to NetGalley and Orion Publishing for this ARC in exchange for my opinion.

This was a really good suspense book that I thoroughly enjoyed. I LOVED the main character! She was relatable and well developed. This read more like a suspense than a thriller, but had me HOOKED from chapter 1 all the way to the end! I loved how the ending tied everything up very neatly! Very nicely done.

Very interesting main story, and I liked the links to the COVID pandemic in it regarding lockdowns and restrictions etc. Although I didn't particularly like the main character.
Slow burn, but overall a fairly dark and sinister book.
Did take me a while to get into as I wasn't gripped and felt there was a lot of information that wasn't really needed.

This was a gripping thriller and kept me engaged for 2 days!

We meet Caitlin, who is a young woman and should be living it up. She is having a summer vacation but soon finds herself hitchhiking alone trying to get back home. She is picked up by a very trust-worthy looking family and they offer her a place to stay so Caitlin feeling safe accepts.

This soon turns into what I can only describe as a very wrong decision and she should have carried on alone.

The thrilling turns in this novel kept me glued to the pages, I did find myself wondering how Caitlin became a little silly in this novel as some things were just avoidable.

A good summer read by author Jane Bailey.

Thanks to Netgalley, the author and the publishers for allowing me a copy of this novel in exchange for my honest review.

‘Vengeance is mine. I will repay, saith the Lord’ (Romans 12:15)

I think that, as a writer, you are getting yourself into quite a lot of (trouble) if you want to write a novel based on the Anna Karenina principle. After all, the opening line of the novel does not lie. 'Every weird family is weird in its own way.'

I have read Karenina many times, in various languages and in various translations - so I had high expectations when the book opened with this sentence.
As the basis for this novel, the author has chosen the young and immature Caitlin as the narrator and observer of both the families she is/becomes a part of. Through her inner monologue, we also get to know the family dynamics of her own family in Cornwall.

Cailtin is hitchhiking home when she is picked up by a family with two daughters, who offer her a lift to Gloucester. As it is already late, they offer her to stay the night so that she can continue her journey the next day. She may stay overnight with a hippy, happy, touchy-feely, eco-warrior family living on a remote 'working farm', where they have gone all the way back to a natural lifestyle, so no internet, no phones, and no wifi.
When much of the world goes into lockdown because of the Covid pandemic, Caitlin is asked to stay on as a nanny-tutor for the two girls.

The book is peppered with sexual fantasies, and expectations, and we regularly share Caitlins desires of threesomes, and other sex-orientated fantasies, some rather explicit.

Caitlin ends up having a passionate relationship with Marcus, and for the first time in her life she feels she is truly loved.
The reader is deliberately kept in the dark about the family relationships between Marcus and Mimi and their children, because later Marcus confesses to Cailtin that they are not married and that he would like to marry her.

This 'simple' story about a young woman who spends a lockdown on a family's farm is not a psychological thriller, nor a love story, but rather a tale of fate, chance, powerlessness and the extreme consequences of love on a deeper level.
Via Cailtin we get a peek into the tragedies each character suffers, their misery and joy and ultimately, their infidelity. This is a story about (sexual) desires, about family relations, marriage (-bonds), and what life is all about, namely living well, love & death; In this story, love and its consequences are rather sad and cruel. (home deliveries that go wrong). You loathe and condemn certain characters, while holding others in your heart..

I think it's quite a risk to narrate Tolstoy's masterpiece by a 19-year-old. And you may wonder whether the form in which this novel is cast lends itself to that. (psychological thriller).
In the beginning, I had my doubts, and given the high number of low ratings, there are many readers who missed this reference.
So read and shudder and judge for yourself, as said before, the author has taken quite a risk by taking a young, immature woman as protagonist; however, she cannot be blamed entirely for the silly mistakes she makes, as to understand life’s hardship, love and tragedy and the driving forces behind peoples’ actions one must have one’s adolescent years behind them.

Thank you Netgalley & the publisher for this arc. I leave this review voluntarily.

Overall, it was okay. Some of the twists were really good. But I think most of the story was very slow and there was just so much extra information that wasn’t needed. I liked the happy ending and the crime junkee in me really liked the unfolding of the crimes and the evidence that was presented.

This was one twisted, suspenseful, and crazy book! A wild ride filled with twists and turns you won’t expect. And just when you think you’ve figured things out, there’s more twists!

An easy-read slow-burn psychological thriller centred around a family living in remote Gloucestershire.  A chance encounter with our narrator Caitlin, leads to her staying with the family at the start of the first covid lockdown. She likes the family and decides to stay and help tutor the two daughters. 

Everything’s great .. until it isn’t.  Small things start to happen, that alone could be dismissed or chalked up to a misunderstanding, however as they start to build, Caitlin realises she’s made a terrible mistake. 
 
The use of the lockdown restrictions to build the menace and claustrophobia was clever.  Caitlin, whilst well-intentioned, made some really bad decisions; I wanted to take her to one side and shout “what are you doing?” This made it hard for me really care what happened to her.  It was clear she cared deeply for the daughters and I was far more invested in their outcome.  Some truly awful characters (which I love).
 
Sausage and Freedom were the stars.
 
Thank you Netgalley and Orion for the advanced copy of this book for review consideration.  All opinions are my own.

Nineteen-year-old Caitlin leaves her boyfriend in Europe and hitches a ride home. The family she's with stays the night at their remote country home, and then lockdown hits. She agrees to stay and tutor the daughter, but the place has no internet, and her phone mysteriously disappears.

Okay, besides the mother in me SCREAMING bloody murder at this child for acting STUPID, let's remember we're in a book, this is fiction, and bad things are supposed to happen. Yes, it's kind of hard to suspend that belief, even among those of us who enjoy the genre.

Once we are sufficiently suspended 😂😂😂, I actually enjoyed this story. It was a bit slower at the beginning, but the ending really made up for it for me. Except for the stupidity of the protagonist (but come on, aren't most 19 year olds lacking a little common sense? 😂), this was a fun book for me!

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the eARC in exchange for an honest review!

Sadly this book just wasn’t for me, I tried really hard to get into it and just couldn’t. I ended giving up around the 10% point as nothing had really happened and I just wasn’t drawn into it and really struggled to keep going.

Thank you to NetGalley, the publisher and the author for an advance copy of this book, sadly it wasn’t for me but hopefully other readers will enjoy it.

Although I had a hard time fully empathizing with the main character and hated most of her decisions, to the point where I thought about abandoning the book, at the end she was just a teenager and a good person, with a good heart. But it definitely negatively influenced my opinion about this book.
The main story in general is very entertaining and captivating, but I think the part about the family and friends of the protagonist was a bit unnecessary and disturbing. I did liked that COVID was part of the theme of the book.
In general, good book, but it could have been told in a more enjoyable way, without so much unnecessary detail that did not contribute to the story.