Fray: The haunting and mysterious new literary suspense novel of 2023, for fans of bestsellers THE LONEY and PINE

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The nature of the writing as much a part of the chaotic atmosphere as the depiction of the Scottish Highlands within.

In my book, the narrator is also going through their own challenges, but there's a strong sense throughout all of it about the importance of running and breathing - breath is a thing that keeps coming up. I didn’t know what to expect when I picked up Fray at Brome Lake Books; it seems to be a mystery with an appealing cover, and an Alan Cumming blurb the conjures up Masterpiece Classics. So I guess running is for you both a tool for managing mental health but, in a way, it’s also a metaphor for it?And with a very short drive, there's a forest, a huge wooded area on the very northeastern tip of Fife, or there's other bits of woodland and beach and mountains that aren't terribly far away.

A twisting tale of grief and mental health that sucked me in from the start and swept me along with it. As both a runner and someone who loves the wild landscape of the Scottish Highlands this book transported me to a thoroughly engrossing world. This author knows how to use language to great effect to create a feeling, to create an atmosphere to create a real intensity, The short sharp sentences, next to the long rambling ones create a stream of consciousness so you feel like you’re in the narrators head.Runner's World participates in various affiliate marketing programs, which means we may get paid commissions on editorially chosen products purchased through our links to retailer sites. The narrator has now traced their father to this cottage – he’s not there himself, but the place is full of papers and maps written and drawn by his hand. This intensity that I'm feeling in this moment of panic trying to get down off the side of the mountain safely, is the same experience that I want a reader to have reading the book. In reality, the experience is often very much like the one I had with actual marmite: I hate it, and now understand why others do to. I’m always impressed when the written word evokes strong feelings and emotions; perhaps made easier by the similarities between it’s story and mine.

Breathing in enough to be given life, softening the pain a little, finding some colour in all the grinding grey. The bleak and inhospitable nature around her creates a stark background for our unnamed protagonists grief and guilt over her double loss; the loss of someone missing without resolve, and the loss of someone certainly gone for good. So the last couple of years I’ve actually run without a watch, just getting out and enjoying it and that’s actually been fantastic.The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products. It reads a bit like a radio play with three different voices, though for one of the voices I still have no idea who was speaking.

It is written as a reflection of a spiralling mind with lots of disjointed descriptions and repetition. To me, there just was no point to reliving that experience, without any pay-off or new insight to be gained. But one thing that I knew before I was doing that all this stuff is I have to run in the morning, before I go, as a way of managing my anxiety in advance. This tale is beautifully rendered with a distinct style that brings the full range of emotions to the surface.Had the author stopped at that 25% mark, it would’ve been a 4-star story, and nothing much would’ve been lost.