Home Truths – Charity Norman

Charity Norman has quickly become an automatic must-read author for me. I loved Remember Me and I recommend it constantly; The Secrets Of Strangers was great, too. Her most recent release, her eighth novel, is Home Truths – and the wonderful team at Allen And Unwin were kind enough to send me a copy for review.

Livia’s life turned upside down in 2019. Her husband, Scott, was drawn into the shadowy online world of conspiracy theories after the unexpected death of his beloved brother. Before that tragedy, Scott’s digital footprint was completely clean – but one video about the evils of the pharmaceutical industry linked to another, then another, and before long the algorithm drew him all the way down the rabbit hole. Scott’s radicalisation will have unexpected and tragic consequences, putting the lives of their children in danger and seeing Livia eventually put on trial for manslaughter.

Home Truths is, obviously, terrifying – but not in a gory, stabby, psycho-killer way. It’s scary in the this-could-so-easily-happen-to-my-family way. It highlights the fact that we’re all one or two tragedies away from seeking solace in the wrong place, and we live in an online world designed to draw us to extremes.

The timeline of Home Truths is also crucial, as the emergence of COVID-19 in 2020 is a crucial plot point. The situation goes from bad to worse as all of Scott’s worst fears are realised, and the conspiracy theorists are ‘proven right’.

Naturally, Home Truths depicts the very, very worst case scenario of a YouTube binge, and maybe Norman takes a step or two onto the bridge too far. But it’s still all too believable, and it will keep you gripped until the last piece of the puzzle falls into place.