A Game For All The Family is a very psychological, plot thickening mystery filled with twists and even has a second narrative going on throughout.

The story follows Justine Merrison as her family is moving to a new house in Devon to get away from her old life and career in TV drama production that nearly destroyed her. What happened in London to make Justine so desperate to get away? We are left wondering, while all we know for sure is that now Justine literally wants to spend her days doing nothing. Justine’s husband, Alex, is an opera singer that travels very often leaving Justine home with their 14 year old daughter, Ellen. Justine takes notice that Ellen has been acting strange, withdrawn, secretive, and not her usual self. When she finally gets an explanation out of Ellen as to why she has been acting so odd, she says that her friend George has been expelled from school for simply borrowing her coat and being accused of stealing it. Reasonably so this upsets Ellen, so Justine goes to her school in an attempt to sort it out and get George un-expelled. Oddly, the school insists George never even existed. Is Justine’s daughter making it all up? She has never been known to do this sort of thing, but she has been acting odd..

In the meantime, Justine had also began receiving anonymous threatening phone calls. The calls are a woman that Justine has never heard in her life, even though the caller insists she knows Justine. This continues to get more and more mysterious.

On top of all that, Ellen has been writing a fictional story for class that Justine finds unusual. It is a murder mystery featuring an odd family with the most peculiar names. The story continues throughout the book giving us an additional chapter every so often. It isn’t immediately clear what the significance of Ellen’s story is until a bit later in the book, but it is a very entertaining narrative. In fact, it may have been my favorite part of the story.

Clearly there is a lot going on in this book with what seems to be a few different mysteries. It does all come together at one point, although it isn’t as complicated to figure out as I would have hoped. The story gets quite psychological throughout and never lets down on that note. Sophie Hannah gave us quite a clever story here that ties everything up quite neatly by the end.

I would recommend to fans of psychological thrillers, mysteries, and really twisty books.

WOW WOW WOW I so enjoyed this book.

Justin Alex and Ellen move to Devon for a quieter life and to do nothing as Justin puts it.
Ellen is set an assignment at school to write a story it includes herself a family tree a murderer and the murderers family.Ellen has a best friend who gets expelled (George) but when Justin tries to sort things out they say they have never heard of George before.Justin is also getting threatening phone calls.
As the family try and sort out what is going on who is the person keep phoning what happened to George and the family in Ellen's story which sees about real people who lived in the house they now live in (Who are they)?
Everything comes together at the end....
What a brilliant book had me enthralled right to the end with its many twists and turns.
Well Done a must read...