The Birdcage

So good! I thoroughly enjoyed the alternating narration as well as times in this creative storytelling. While the heart of the story will madden you and have you asking “what happened?!” no fewer than 5 times, it’s well worth the read.

Coming of age Thriller set in beautiful Cornwall , England . Kat, Flossie And lauren are half sisters that share a famous artist Father. Grown apart over the years they all bear the burden of a terrible secret . A page turner with fully realized characters

Charles Finch is an artist who had a habit of sleeping around. Each girl has a different mother, but only one of them did he truly love. They are so close in age, it’s obvious to them all that there was a lot of overlap in their births.

Raised by three very different mothers, they each tell their side of a story that they are all trying to forget. Except for Lauren, who doesn’t remember much about that eclipse in Rock Point, the Cornish mansion where they were hosted every August by their father and his parents.

Lauren is the odd one out. Her mother loved her and her father loved her. The other two have always been jealous and have tortured Lauren mercilessly.

The father is the typical artist. Forcing them to sit for a painting with a birdcage. It’s wildly accepted and now who knows where it is.

So many secrets in this book! They may be half-sisters, but oh my are they mean girls!

And whatever happened in 1999 during the eclipse has shattered so many lives and someone who knows it all is now threatening to get them all if they don’t leave. Someone knows what happened that summer.

Now their father has summoned them back to Rock Point for an announcement of some kind. You can bet it won’t be a good one. The girls reluctantly go and fall back into their old pattern of picking on Lauren, until she starts to remember what happened that night, with the help of my favorite character, Bertha the talking parrot who spills all!

Very descriptive and very true in the relationships with half/step-siblings. The ending was shocking and satisfying.

NetGalley/April 28th, 2022 by Penguin

A dual timeline generational mystery filled with secrets and strong emotions between a pieced together family surrounding a selfish patriarch as he makes a startling announcement. The Birdcage is a delight and filled with clues and metaphors within it's tight prose.

Charles, a famous and infamous artist has summoned his children to his Cornwall estate for a gathering and a declaration. The half sisters (Kat, Flora and Lauren) dread this meeting at their old summer gathering place. Multiple points of view from the past are interspersed to give us hints on what has already transpired. The sisters are bright and vibrant characters and you will enjoy meetings them and hearing about their lives. As the timelines converge we learn the great secret as well as uncover who is terrorizing the family with threats. If you like dual timelines, family mysteries and secrets, big and bold characters, then #TheBirdCage is for you
#Penguingroup #putnam #netgalley #netgalleyreads

Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for a digital ARC of this title in exchange for an honest review.
WOW. This is a lush, captivating, slow-burn work that Chase knocks out of the park. For fans of Kate Morton or Susanna Kearsley, this is another standout author. 3 women, who share the same father, are drawn back to Rock Point at the request of their artist father, Charlie, for an "announcement". What happens over the multi-day stay is a reckoning with the summer that changed their lives forever, 20 years ago. I have a habit of trying to guess The Big Twist because...I'm impatient, perhaps? Anyway-I sent a text to my best friend about a quarter of the way through the book with my guesses. The one that I was initially least confident about, and had actually tossed out as somewhat of a joke, ended up being correct, in a way. The Big Twist left me shocked, and of course happened right when my family requested dinner. I threw sandwiches and cereal at them while never taking my eyes off the pages, so drawn into the reveal was I. Chase hooked me in with the three personalities of Laura, Flora, and Kat and kept me drawn in the entire novel. The Final Big Twist was done with Morton-like precision stabbing (if you're a fan of Kate Morton books, you know how her Big Twists feel when you put all the pieces together), making you feel the spectrum of emotions when you pieced everything together. This was an outstanding novel, and I highly recommend everyone read this.