Chilling and twisty. A well written thriller set in France that follows along 2 timelines and delves into the very disturbing things that happened on one small island. I found myself having to actively suspend my disbelief at times, but overall, it was a very enjoyable read.

Thank you so much to the publisher for sending me a copy. Life got in the way of me reading this before the time expired :(
it seems really good, so will be checking it out from the library or purchasing it from my local bookstore
5 stars for the vibes it gives

A great read by this author. I definitely recommend checking this one out!
Thank you NetGalley for providing a copy of this ARC in exchange for an honest review!

A real game of Chinese boxes, with stories within stories, until the reader finally loses the thread and can no longer distinguish reality from fantasy and madness within the narrative. Who is Sandrine? What is she hiding? Where is the island and what really happened? Events unfold through confessions that all sound more or less untrue, and when, at the end, the mystery is revealed, one cannot help but realise the author's skill in constructing this little jewel of psychological black literature.

A lovely quick read with great characters and plot. I really enjoyed it and will look out for more from the author.

A strange mystery set in Normandy. However, the multiple timelines confused me and though the writing and premise were good, the novel was not for me.

Oh My. Where to begin with this one?

This book is like an onion, where each twist peels back a new layer and reveals something more and more shocking. I don’t know how else to describe this wonderfully suspenseful and atmospheric book that will send shivers up your spine.

You can’t rest on this one at all.

I don’t really know how to describe the plot without giving away any plot points, because this is a book that is best discovered as you read it - the fun is in the shock value as each twist slaps you right in the face. But on a basic level, the book follows Sandrine as she goes to a mysterious island, steeped in tragedy, to clean out her grandmother’s belongings after her grandmother’s death. But the island is holding onto some deep secrets and Sandrine must face them if she is to ever male it back to a normal life.

Word of warning: book contains mentions of explicit sexual assault.

Again, it’s hard to know exactly what to say without giving anything away. I guess I should just say that I greatly enjoyed this book. It has a lot of mystery and the devil is really in the details. The story is complex and deep and I was completely drawn in from the beginning. Fans of horror and mysteries will really enjoy this trip off the coast of France!

Oh wow! What did I just read?
It was like the matryoshka-doll of all thrillers! A Trojan horse inside a Trojan horse! This book took the word "twist" to a whole new level.... It really took me a couple of hours to get my mind back to normal mode after closing this book and I had to think long and hard about what rating to give it!
I'm not going to give you a short description as is my habit (because the synopsis at the back of the book doesn't give a clear view of the story! (Swipe 👉🏻to see the blurb)
All I can say without revealing anything crucial is this: Imagine reading this book like a matryoshka doll. You start with a story and think you know what this will lead to, only to then get a revelation that removes one layer and leaves you with another smaller matryoshka that makes everything clearer.
You think you've got it all figured out, only to be blown away by a new revelation that reopens a new matryoshka you didn't know was there, but has brought you that much closer to the truth. Until you discover another matryoshka hidden in what you thought was the last one!
But you finally start to understand everything! This is ingenious! Things finally start to make sense, you even dare to speculate how it's going to end, and then all of a sudden.... bam! Wait! WHAT? And before you know it, you're falling down the rabbit hole!
This is probably the worst review I've ever written 🙈but I really can't find any other way to explain what I’ve just read without revealing everything!
 
If you like true psychological thrillers... where psychology is a key part of the story, if you don't shy away from heavy topics like kidnapping, rape and pedophilia, if you love a thriller where nothing is as you think it is, and you secretly define yourself as a riddle solver, read this book now! And go in blind!

This was a 5 star read up to 95%. Then the author added the mother of all twists and lost a star, taking it just a little too far for me!

Thanks #netgalley and @hodderbooks for sending this e-Arc in exchange for an honest review!

I enjoyed the book until upto near the end. I found the storyline got confusing and had no idea what it was about. I was left feeling a bit disappointed that after such a great start the ending was poor.

I was granted an advanced copy of this text by Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. This book has a good story to it, but the grammar issues detract from the impact. Loubry apparently published this novel in French so the translation seems to be the real problem, not the story itself.

The Refuge is a riveting psychological thriller from award-winning French crime writer Jerome Loubry centred around emotion, depth and anguish. In 2019, François Villemin takes his place in front of an assembly of students from the Faculty of Tours. For this second session, he wants to tell them about a case that appeared in the eighties, which he nicknamed "Sandrine's refuge". 23 years earlier, Sandrine, a young Parisian, had just moved to Villers-sur-Mer, in Normandy and was working as a journalist for the local media in the small village. She travelled to see Wernst, an old peasant, whose herd of cows had been daubed in swastikas by careless young folk. When she returns, a strange sense of déjà vu makes her uncomfortable. But she won't have time to go into this thought, doubtless stupid and unfounded, since her boss, Pierre, summons her to his office and hands her a letter from a lawyer. She informs him that her maternal grandmother has just died and that he is waiting for her in her study for the reading of the will. Although Sandrine has never known this grandmother, whom her own mother described as crazy and marginal, the young woman goes to the island where she lived, with only a handful of inhabitants to go and empty the house of her grandmother’s personal effects after passing on, an original settler who lived alone on a tiny island, not far from the coast.

When she arrives on this grey and cold island, Sandrine discovers a handful of elderly inhabitants organised in near autarky. All of them describe her grandmother as a charming person, far from the image Sandrine has of her. Still, the atmosphere is strange here. In a few short hours, Sandrine realises that the inhabitants are hiding a secret. Something or someone terrifies them. But then why don't any of them ever leave the island and escape it? What happened to the children at the hastily closed summer camp in 1949? Who was her grandmother really? Sandrine will be found a few days later, wandering on a mainland beach, her clothes covered in someone else's blood but she cannot remember anything. This is a compulsive and wholly original thriller and not only does it have a thrill-infested plot and a claustrophobic atmosphere it also is an intelligent, scalpel-sharp story with a profound tale to tell regarding the aftermath of nazism; it really is abundant with heart and soul and substance. There are secrets and lies throughout but they are far more earth-shattering than the usual petty kind lingering throughout the pages. It's a novel as Machiavellian as it is torturous and as it twists and turns, pushes and pulls into different directions it becomes more convoluted in an often bleak and disturbing manner where trusting the voices emanating from the pages seems like an impossibility.

Young journalist Sandrine finds out that her grandmother is dead and that she has been asked to empty her grandmother's house. Her grandmother, Suzanne, lived on a small island near the Normandy coast and Sandrine had never met her due to a failing out between Suzanne and her daughter (Sandrine's mother). When she reaches the island, Sandrine finds out that it was briefly used as a holiday camp for ten children affected by World War II but it was shut down in 1949, but the staff, including Suzanne, have lived on the island ever since. What secrets are the inhabitants of the island keeping, and what happened all those years ago?

When I started this book, I had no idea just where it was going to go. It's well-written and there are some truly jaw-dropping twists, but I just felt as if there was something missing for me as I didn't enjoy reading it as much as I thought I would. I will definitely try reading some of the author's other works but I found this one only okay.

TW: child death, sexual assault, animal cruelty/death.

Thanks to NetGalley & publishers, Hodder & Stoughton, for the opportunity to read an ARC.

This is a rather strange (in a good way) book that it is really much better going into as blind as you can. We start in a university when a lecturer is about to present a case... we then switch back in time - to the case in hand. Where Sandrine's Refuge is, well, explained, and then, well, that explanation is examined. And then, after I recomposed myself from when my head sort of imploded. Well...
I'm really not doing this book justice. It has layers upon layers - with each layer bleeding into another, not necessarily the one next to it. It's hard to explain - hence my recommendation to go in blind... There's cats and clocks and shoes - clean shoes. And the word refuge is explain in all its meanings. And a whole host of rather colourful and, often, larger than life characters. All illustrating the psychological definition of refuge - a safe harbour when the world is too hard.
But what is the truth and - well, to be honest, what is truth anyway?
It's an incredible book for all the reasons I can't go into here for fear of spoilers. It's one of the few I will re-read (after a little while has elapsed) as I think it has more depths that one read can do justice to. It's also quite emotional. And shocking in places, quite cruel. But an important book and one that will stay with me a while yet...
My thanks go to the Publisher and Netgalley for the chance to read this book.

Original, gripping and tragic: hats off to the author!🎩👒

Another Jerome Loubry suspense novel that I just could not put down! This story had me confused and holding my breath, trying to decipher where the real tragedy lay. The story moves back and forth in time to build anticipation and keep the reader a bit off balance. Just as I thought I knew I was hit with a new twist that knocked me back to square one. The finale was a total surprise. I love a tale of suspense that keeps me guessing and on the edge of my seat and The Refuge achieved that in spades.

I just discovered Loubry's work in 2021 and I think I'm hooked!

Thanks to Hodder & Stoughton and NetGalley for providing an advance copy of the book; this is my voluntary and honest review.

I was keen to read "The Refuge" by Jerome Loubry as I'd recently read and enjoyed ,"The Final Chapter" by the same author and thoroughly enjoyed it..........and there is a nod to the previous book in this one.

Sandrine Vaudrier is a young journalist in rural France in 1986 covering stories such as a local Farmer's cows being graffiti'd when she' s told that her Grandmother,who she's never met, has died on a remote island and she's to pick up her belongings. On arrival she quickly realises that something strange is going on and the handful of surviving inhabitants have, as her Grandmother had, been on the island since just after World War 2 and are afraid to leave. Something strange is a massive understatement . She's told the story of a strange holiday camp where her Grandmother worked and the survivors stayed as children and it's murky past as a Nazi military installation.

This is quite an amazing book which will have the reader guessing from the start,as it jumps around between various strange and often horrific events. I was a bit baffled at a bit under halfway on my Kindle when I thought the story was finished and had nowhere else to go.....only for a massive curve-ball to take things in a totally different direction, then another,then another. From a fairly conventional thriller,albeit a very bloody and twisted one it turns into a roller-coaster of deflections, misdirection, shocks and some outright nastiness.

The Refuge isn't for the squeamish or easily-shocked with a number of subjects within the story that might upset or offend. To say more would be dropping big hints to the plot that those yet to read the book wouldn't thank me for.

I normally detail a bit more of the plot of books I review but this is something very "different " and there are so many ways that even the barest extra information other than that already given would be a massive spoiler. Just when you think you know what's going on everything gets turned on its head,not just once but several times, even the kind of book it is seems to change as it goes on.

While it is definitely something very different it did also remind me ,once I'd finished it,of a book by a very well-known American author,yes I know that's an annoying reference but even the specifics of that would give the game away, I'm sure others will come to a similar conclusion.

This book is quite a ride and certainly not what I'd expected after reading the author's previous book . It's hard-hitting, often confusing ,shocking and very,very clever.

Translator Maren Baudet-Lackner deserves particular praise, this is a very complex story flawlessly translated.

*4.5 stars *

“Who rides forth tonight, through storms so wild?
It is the father with his child.
He has the boy in his arms;
he holds him safely, he keeps him warm.
‘My son, why do you hide your face in fear?’
‘Father, can you not see the Erlking?
The Erlking with his crown and tail?’
‘My son, it is a streak of mist”.
“Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe”

When Sandrine is tasked with clearing her late grandmother’s house on an island off the coast of Normandy, France, she discovers a mysterious and frightening place with many secrets. She comes across a former holiday camp that was used just after the Second World War, and was intended to help heal the mental wounds of war for traumatised children. The austere concrete buildings, were a legacy of the Nazis military base. The buildings were to be utilised to attack the mainland, but were never used for that purpose, and instead became the living quarters for the children and staff, but there are some very strange goings on across this isolated island!

Creepy and wonderfully atmospheric, with a terrifying sense of foreboding, this was an extremely clever storyline, very complex but utterly brilliant, though you’ll discover that nothing is as it seems - and I do mean nothing!

A story, within a story, within a story, like a set of Russian dolls. The first part, which happens on a mysterious island, is very atmospheric. The second is horrifying, the part after that is devastating and the whole novel is engrossing, if a little convoluted. The plot is unbearably creepy. I didn’t quite care for the final twist. It was unexpected, but it didn’t completely blow my mind and it reframed the rest of the novel in a way that felt more as a way to shock than an organic ending to the stories. The chapters happen in different years. I found an inconsistency that I still can’t figure out whether was a clue, or just accidental. On the other hand, some stories that seemed out of place at first made more sense after a twist that made me see them in a different light. This novel is definitely worth reading.
I chose to read this book and all opinions in this review are my own and completely unbiased. Thank you, NetGalley/Hodder & Stoughton!

While this is a little slow to start, once you have been pulled into the story, you'll find it hard to put down. There were so many instances where I thought I knew what was happening but I was completely wrong. I just had to keep turning the pages to find out what happened! The way that everything was woven together was clever, and as secrets were revealed, it just got darker & darker.

What an ingenious narrative with different layers of plot and a translation to go with. Fans of psychological thrillers don’t miss it. This book should be read in one sitting. I liked it a lot more than The final chapter. Totally unpredictable.

‘Who rides so late tonight through night and wind?’ - Goethe
Why, it’s the Erlkönig, the Erlking, the symbol of death and the loss of innocence.

In September 2019 François Villemin, a lecturer at Tours University presents a case known as ‘Sandrine’s Refuge’ to his students. We all use refuges, hiding a hurt behind a forced smile, reading, listening to music or day dreaming but Sandrine’s refuge is deep, as deep as the Mariana Trench, forcing her to abandon reality and it is a very necessary refuge.

Zut alors. This is an incredible book, it has taken my breath away in its complexity. It’s an enigma, a huge impenetrable puzzle where there are so many alternate realities. This book defines twisty. It’s like a maze you navigate to try to find your way out but you keep reaching dead ends. The layering in the storytelling resembles Russian dolls or to keep the Russian analogy going like layers of an onion such as on the Kremlin. I don’t want to give much away in this review because it’s one of those books you have to go into blind and without preconceptions. However, the Erlking, water, islands, clocks, cats, shoes and many other images combine to create a story of incredible power. Throughout the narrative there are some powerful images and emotional references to Nazism and this serves to demonstrate the magnitude of the story. It’s a dark black tale and people become prisoners to it but their ghostly presences haunts the pages. It’s chilling, the stuff of nightmares you don’t want to dream never mind live. There are fearful secrets despairingly locked in the mind that are shocking and horrifying you almost want to disconnect and seek your own refuge from the reality of it yet at the same time you want to play detective. What is Sandrine's truth? Where does it lie? You try to work it out and guess what? I’m wrong, every time.

This is one of the cleverest, most powerful, most enigmatic books I’ve read in a long time. It’s not easy, the themes are dark and leave a bitter taste as you shudder and weep but this is a novel I will never forget. Incroyable.

Ps. Superb translation too.

With thanks to NetGalley and especially to Hodder and Stoughton for the much appreciated arc in return for an honest review.