The Reunion

M. J. Arlidge & Steph Broadribb

Average Rating 7/10 (1 Review)

A skull looks up at Jennie from the trench, but it's not the chalk-white bone and grimacing teeth that send her reeling. It's the heart-shaped gold pendant, its delicate chain snapped in two. The necklace Hannah never took off. It can't be Hannah. But it is.

When Jennie Whitmore arrives at her school reunion, she immediately regrets her decision. Why would she choose to surround herself with people who were never nice to her? Who still aren't, even now she's a police officer? The only person who truly looked out for her all those years ago was charming, beautiful Hannah. Until the day she disappeared.

Jennie is ready to finally put White Cross Academy behind her, the old school building demolished the morning after the party. But with the demolition comes a call: a teenage girl's remains have been found on the grounds.

The instant drop in Jennie's gut tells her that the remains might be Hannah's, but when she's called in to examine them, the truth becomes undeniable. Hannah didn't run away and abandon Jennie thirty years ago; in fact, she never left White Cross at all.

Suddenly, Jennie has a murder to solve. The murder of her best friend. But can she do so before her colleagues discover just how closely connected she is to the victim? Before a mystery stalker makes good on his threats to silence her for good?

The Reunion is a gripping mystery perfect for fans of The Sanatorium, Lucy Foley, and Ruth Kelly.

Review by Adam Colclough (010825) Rating (7/10)

Review by Adam Colclough
Book Source: Not Known
Rating 7/10
As teenagers Jennie Whitmore and her friend Hannah were inseparable, to the point where they planned to run away to London to start a new life. Only on the day of their escape Hannah disappeared leaving behind a lot of unanswered questions and a hole in her friend’s life she has never been able to fill.

Flash forward thirty years and Jennie finds herself unwillingly attending a reunion of old school friends. An awkward enough evening made all the worse when human remains are discovered at the soon to be demolished school shortly afterwards.

Having made a career in the police Jennie is given the job of investigating the find and it soon becomes clear the bones may be those of her former friend. Putting her is a difficult position since way back when, she was one of the last people to see Hannah alive.

This a clever and at times touching crime story from two practitioners of the art who are at the very top of their game.

The plot is satisfyingly complex and is also rooted in the maelstrom of emotions that mark adolescence, particularly for those kids who, for one reason or another feel like outsiders. Arlidge and Broadribb have brought together a cast of characters driven, as teenagers and adults, by believable disappointments and life events, maybe, in one case, to do something unthinkable.

A book with two authors can sometimes feel like it has one too many, not in this instance though. The resulting novel is enjoyable as a piece of fiction not least because it is uncomfortably honest about the intensity of friendships and rivalries experienced on the cusp of adulthood and the long shadows they can cast.
Adam Colclough (1st August 2025)