Everyone is always raving about Singh's writing. When I saw this book pop up, I thought I'd give it a whirl.
Nothing pains me more than when an author's writing and me don't seem to mesh. Unfortunately that is the case with this one. I can see why people love her and this book, but it just wasn't for me. I had the hardest time staying interested in the story the whole way through. I found my mind wandering constantly; so much so, I don't think I retained much from this book.

This was a fun slow burn locked room thriller. The first half of the book is a bit on the slower side while it is setting up the characters and the setting. The author's ability to bring you right to the crumbling estate and make you feel like you are right there in this creepy setting was one of my favorite things about this book. You feel the setting rather than just reading about it, not every author can do that.
Once you get to the second half of the book the story starts to fly by and you are turning the pages furiously to get to the end.

I thought I would love this book but unfortunately I didn't. The problem started with too many POV's and not enough distinguishing characteristics between them. The second reason is that not much happens and it became boring. By the time things started progressing it was much to late for me.

It started sort of slow for me because there are so many characters to keep up with. I had trouble settling into the story with my digital copy, so I grabbed this print book to see if that would help—reading in print did! Slowly the twists started coming and by the middle point I felt pretty invested. From there, it was faster-paced until the ending. It was a fun read. A locked-room murder mystery story with a little suspense too. I think the long length and slow start kept it from feeling as suspenseful as it was probably intended. But a fun read nonetheless and my first by this author.

I’d like to thank Berkley Publishing and NetGalley for sending me a review copy.

This is quite a departure from the author's other books. I definitely applaud her for trying something new. The writing was very good but I just wasn't getting grabbed by the story. I'm going to blame myself here though because this isn't really my genre.

DNF at 25%.
This one was a little too slow for me. There were a ton of characters, and with the slow pace, it just wasn’t pulling me in.

There Should Have Been Eight
by Nalini Singh

There Should Have Been Eight by Nalini Singh is a slow burn suspense read - a first for me from author Singh. I enjoy the setting being in New Zealand - haven’t read too many books set there so this was a fun one for me. I did enjoy the read though it was slow, it had a nice twist in the end that I enjoyed.

Singh ramps up the tension in her gothic atmospheric mystery where nothing and nobody is what it seems. Friendship has its limits when a group of college friends get together for a celebration and discover everything they thought they knew about a friend's death was a lie. As the clues slowly reveal themselves, the group soon learns that the truth about what happened is almost unbelievable. This multi-layered storyline kept me hooked with its complicated characters and the slow reveal of the mystery. My only issue was the ending. It felt abrupt and unfinished.

There Should Have Been Eight by Nalini Singh

Published: November 21, 2023
Berkley
Genre: Murder Thrillers
Pages: 416
KKECReads Rating: 5/5
I received a copy of this book for free, and I leave my review voluntarily.

This was a twisted novel that kept me guessing. I love layered thrillers, and Nalini did not disappoint. I loved the darkness of her writing and how she told this story.

The ironies throughout this book are brilliantly played like Luna losing her eyesight and her career as a photographer. The emotions in that fragmented portion were sharp.

This novel made me grateful that I don’t have a sordid group of friends connected by tragedy and pent-up emotions. The way this story unraveled was fantastic. Every time I thought I knew what was coming, I was wrong.

This book kept me guessing, and in the end, I was wrong but blown away. Nalini is a new to me author, but I am excited to read any thriller she writes!

There Should Have Been Eight is an isolated, closed circle thriller. Told through the perspective of Luna, seven friends come together for a weekend get-away to reminisce about their friend Bea. Everyone has a secret and people start disappearing and dying. Honestly, there should have been a thriller here somewhere, but sadly there just wasn't.

I really wanted to love this one. But I just thought it was meh. I was honestly bored thorough most of it. I never really felt a sense of danger or urgency. The characters were insufferable. I couldn't find a character to root for. They are all supposed to be best friend, yet I never felt like they were. Luna was going blind, but she refused to tell her friends? Why? I know she was still coming to terms with it, but why wouldn't you clue in your "best friends"? I also got tired of her complaining about the way Bea's sister handled Bea's funeral. We get it, you are mad. Move on. The ending was predictable. I think fans of this author will like it, but it just wasn't thrilling enough for me.

THERE SHOULD HAVE BEEN EIGHT
By Nalini Singh

Published by Berkley (November 21, 2023)
Hardcover $25.20
Kindle $14.99

Reviewed by Ashley Riggleson

If you loved Ruth Ware’s novel One by One and would like to know where to go next, allow me to suggest Nalini Singh’s new novel, There Should Have Been Eight. This locked room mystery set in a creepy house in New Zealand’s Southern Alps does not disappoint.

There Should Have Been Eight tells the story of a group of friends who, after years apart, all converge in a run-down mansion where, it soon becomes apparent, something is not right. To complicate matters, Luna, the novel’s narrator, is rapidly losing her eyesight, which calls her reliability into question. And, although this group seems normal enough at first, there are secrets lurking under the surface. The group is still reeling from their friend Bea’s apparent suicide some time earlier. Luna, who loved Bea more than anyone else, struggles with the fact that she was not able to say goodbye and has suspicions that the story she has been told about Bea’s last days is incomplete.

Meanwhile, in the novel’s present, strange things begin to happen. A life-like doll made in Bea’s image shows up in different areas of the house, and sinisterly, people soon end up sick, maimed, or dead. A bad snowstorm ensures that this group of “friends” is stranded in this gothic mansion with a dark history. As Luna struggles to understand what is happening in the present, she also learns about one of the mansion’s past occupants, Clara, an ancestor of one of the friends (a woman named Darcie, who now owns this dilapidated house).

The further readers get in this twisty thriller, the more muddled things become, and readers will find that, until the appropriate moment, they have more questions than answers.

I read most of There Should Have Been Eight while on a plane, and this compulsively readable novel kept me engaged the whole flight. Seemingly throwaway lines hint at big reveals, even as Singh continues to mislead the reader. While not everything in this novel was unpredictable, there were a lot of surprises in store. Singh skillfully plants many red herrings, and as the book progresses, no one is safe from suspicion.

There Should Have Been Eight is a contemporary thriller set close to the present moment, but it also pays homage to the classics of the genre. This pacey and chilling novel about obsession, envy, and encroaching darkness is sure to be a popular fall and winter read.

Ashley Riggleson is a free-lance book reviewer from Rappahannock County. When she is not reading or writing book reviews, she can usually be found playing with her pets, listening to podcasts, or watching television with friends and family.

Seven friends meet again for a reunion on a remote estate in New Zealand. They haven't been as close since their friend Bea died, but they meet up again and reminisce on old times. However, things quickly turn dark as reminders of Bea keep popping up and it seems like someone is targeting the friends. The estate is filled with secret passageways and a dark family history, adding to the foreboding feeling. Overall, a gripping thriller that keeps you guessing if there is really someone behind the acts and whether the attacks are coming from within the group. Fans of Ruth Ware or Lucy Foley will like this one.

🌟📚 “There Should Have Been Eight” is a gripping thriller that transports readers to a remote estate nestled in New Zealand’s Southern Alps. Nalini Singh, known for her evocative storytelling, weaves a tale of secrets, friendship, and haunting memories that will keep you on the edge of your seat. 📚 🌟

Plot Summary: Seven friends reunite at Bea’s family’s once-glorious mansion—a place straight out of a gothic novel. Best friends, old flames, secret enemies, and new lovers find themselves snowed in on Christmas morning. As the weather turns treacherous, the walls of the mansion close in, leaving no room for lies.

But there’s a missing piece—the eighth friend, Bea, who was lost nine years ago. As they reminisce, buried emotions resurface, and the truth about Bea’s death threatens to unravel. What really happened that fateful day? 🌹🕰️

Why You’ll Love It:
🌫️ Atmospheric Setting: The remote estate, half in ruins, adds to the eerie ambiance. You’ll feel the chill of the Southern Alps and the weight of secrets.

🤐 Character Dynamics: Nalini Singh masterfully portrays the complexities of friendship and love. Each character has their own hidden agenda.

🔍Unraveling Mystery: The suspense builds steadily, keeping you guessing until the final revelation. Prepare for jaw-dropping twists!

Thank you Berkley for my ARC in exchange for my review!

This was an excellent thriller. I love the “trapped in isolation with a murderer” trope and this novel made use of it expertly. There was an interesting cast of characters and the whodunnit was not easy to figure out. And just when you thought the twists were done, there was yet another shocking reveal. Overall, I really enjoyed this novel.

I love a locked door mystery thriller just as much as anyone, but this one just fell a bit. The biggest thing was that there were just too many characters to keep track of. I found myself constantly going back to try and connect each one to things. So many are dry and bland. Many are unreliable which helped add to the story. This was just a big miss for me.

What sounded like a fantastic plot (a group of friends reunites at a country manor for the first time after losing the friend that held their group together, a sudden and fierce snowstorm leaves them all stranded, and they're suddenly being picked off one-by-one) sadly just didn't work for me. The writing was baffling, written in such a juvenile way that I would 100% believe this was an AI-created book.

If that plot is strong enough I can look past lackluster writing, but this wasn't for me.

Veena’s review of There Should Have Been Eight by Nalini Singh
Crime Thriller published by Berkley 21 Nov 23

Ms. Singh is a superb writer. She has the rare talent of sweeping her readers into her world and taking them along for the ride that her words paint. The suspense is bone-chilling and, in fact, I still have goosebumps to show for it.


Luna has been living in London while the others have lived, loved, and thrived in New Zealand and yet it seems none of them has been able to shake the suicide of their friend Bea, most particularly Luna. When Bea’s sister Darcie invites everyone to the siblings’ isolated family home for a reunion, Luna is determined to find closure on Bea, especially because her own world is shrinking.

Against the sinister backdrop of a partially burnt Gothic mansion with ancient pipes and a cold front moving in, the friends are destined to find that things will never be the same again for any of them. The first incident is a doll that once belonged to Bea and was a childhood replica of her that supposedly was cremated with Bea but shows up on Darcie’s bed. Is Darcie’s reaction to the appearance of the doll extreme?

As Luna deciphers the story hidden in the midst of the recipes of the woman who came to this house as a bride and lived a solitary life under the thumb of a dominating and perhaps mad husband and a psychotic daughter, their own story plays out in real time.

Nothing is truly as it seems on the surface, and that’s before the accidents begin and one of their own is killed. The story that emerges is not pretty, but the subsequent actions leave an indelible impact on the reader. Would you bury a body if asked? That question is asked and answered, and the depths of human behavior revealed in remarkable fashion.



Grade: A

How are you with creepy books? I just read There Should Have Been Eight and whoa, this was intense and creepy. It is the story of a group of friends who reunite in a dilapidated estate in New Zealand full of secret passageways and hiding places. When the friends start to have freak accidents and fall very ill, Luna starts to question everything and everyone and starts to dig into the death of one of her old friends. This book was gothic and dark, twisted and suspenseful. It was a hold your breath, yell at the characters, and gasp out loud kind of books. And did I mention so intense?

A creepy house. Seven semi-estranged friends. One stranger. Mysterious events. Nalini Singh’s latest thriller, There Should Have Been Eight, had me thinking of Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None, although the tales vary in significant ways. Still, if you are looking for a solid locked-room thriller and love the vibe of Christie’s old novel, this is the story for you.

It’s been nearly a decade since Bea’s death, but for Luna Wylie, her loss has been a daily agony. Bea had been the star around which the rest of their friendship group orbited, and her demise cast them adrift. Now, Bea’s sister Darcie has arranged for them to gather at the old family estate. A semi-ruined mansion in an isolated part of New Zealand, the place is difficult to get to, and its environs can be dangerous to traverse. It will, of course, prove to be even more hazardous to leave. But I’m jumping ahead.

Having met as teens and stayed (loosely) connected through adulthood, the seven compadres know darn near everything about each other. They know who among them has hooked up and broke up. They know who not-so-secretly really doesn’t like another member. They know who’s cheating on who – and with whom. But it’s what they don’t know that may kill them.

Luna is the narrator for our fun outing into this wild world, and she is, as is the vogue nowadays, a tad unreliable. An adopted child, she has an unexpected genetic ocular degenerative disorder that will soon leave her blind. This would be devastating enough for anyone to discover, but Luna is a photographer who has always interacted with the world from behind her camera. Even with her close friends, she is more likely to be taking pictures than taking part in the action depicted in the photos. She hasn’t told anyone about the coming crisis, preferring to process it quietly herself before making it public, but it has begun to seriously impede her life. Her night vision is completely gone, leaving her sightless every evening unless she is surrounded by reliable lighting. And wouldn’t you know it, an ancient mansion in the back of beyond just happens to have very unreliable lighting.

Luna had planned to take the opportunity afforded by this get-together to demand answers from Darcie. She is convinced her intense (and, from my viewpoint, creepy) mourning of Bea is due to the fact that Darcie had had her sister cremated far from home. Without a grave, Luna has not been able to mourn and move on properly. However, no one else seems to want to talk about the past, and before Luna can force the subject upon them, she learns that Darcie is experiencing a difficult start to her first pregnancy. Luna decides to let the past stay in the past as a result.

Luna’s courteous concern for her friend’s condition is not shared by all, however, because Darcie is the victim of a cruel prank on the first day of their reunion. That’s just the start. Strange things begin to happen that have all the guests wondering just who among them wants to stir up trouble and why. When they find themselves trapped by the weather, the delicacy of their situation becomes even more evident. There should have been eight of them there, but their friendship has been reduced to seven. Will the macabre events and dangerous setting reduce their numbers even more?

To clarify, while the title is There Should Have Been Eight, there actually are eight. One of the seven has brought his fiancée with him, someone the other guests have never met before. While Grace is a stranger to their group, her sweet personality, lively demeanor, and obvious adoration of their friend Aaron have them joyfully accepting her into their clique. Kaea and Luna are the only singletons in the remaining six, with Ash being married to Darcie and Nix being married to Vansi.

The story is told from the first-person point of view of Luna, so the other characters are impressions seen solely from her perspective. This adds to the sense of danger since, at the start, we are unsure if Luna simply doesn’t know she’s (possibly) besties with a psycho, or if an unseen stranger is stalking their small group, or if the events are simply the result of bad luck. But it also means that the story is almost solely about one person – Luna’s thoughts and feelings are all we are certain of in the increasingly uncertain world of our narrative. I have mixed feelings on how well this workw. On the one hand, Luna is primarily a practical, rational person who is an astute observer and able to work through everything that is happening carefully. That makes her a wonderful amateur detective. On the other hand, she has a major issue going on with her health in terms of her encroaching loss of sight, and she is more than a little unhinged in regard to her feelings about Bea. That made her less reliable than I prefer in a situation where I am solely dependent on one character for information. It also leaves me, as a reviewer, in a bit of a conundrum. I don’t want to talk about the secondary players because part of the joy of the story is unraveling who they are and the degree to which Luna knows them. Again, I have mixed feelings on how well the author pulls this off since, while our questions regarding them add to the suspense, the resultant superficial knowledge of important players takes away some of the emotional depth the book could have had.

The creepy location and locked room nature of the mystery had me expecting a gothic vibe, especially given the number of people who had died in the past under mysterious circumstances in the oversized, secret-passage-filled manse. This story lacks the ambiance for that, but the more grounded atmosphere of the suspense actually worked beautifully. I absolutely loved how the story focuses on probable explanations for everything that is happening over paranormal ones, and how the very real sense of danger and menace come not from some macabre factor of the house itself but the (possibly) dangerous denizens inside it. I also loved that the layout of the manor made it possible there was a ninth person messing with them. Just what was happening remained a question till the very end.

The author also nails the pacing. It’s brisk but not so fast-paced you are overwhelmed by the action.

Luna is an interesting heroine. She is a bit unstable, but she is also very kind, just, resourceful, brave, and wise. My only complaint about her comes from the obsession she has with Bea and how unbalanced it is.

I have a couple of quibbles that keep the story from DIK status, which are the over-the-top ending and the Hollywood-style depiction of mental illness, the drugs used to control it, and a seeming misunderstanding of how sedatives actually work. For the record, books/TV/movies often get these things wrong.

That said, There Should Have Been Eight is a good mystery with excellent prose. I recommend it to the author’s legion of fans together with anyone who enjoys suspense stories.

Overall I enjoyed this one but it was very slow to get into and took a minute before anything really happened. That being said, once things did start happening, it was a twisty little thing that had me vested until it was over, and even then I had to consult with a couple of friends to make sure I read it right. I really enjoyed this one and will be going back to this author and reading her prior books. I do recommend this one but want to note again it is definitely on the slower burn side for sure.

The audio for this was fantastic, I loved the narrator and enjoyed reading it this way. Thank you to PRH Audio for the ALC and to Berkley for the finished copies to review.