"Everyone has one story that explains them completely. I thought I knew what mine was. I was wrong - " SUNDIAL by Catriona Ward was voted for the November pick of the month for the Wine And Crime Book Club, which is how I finally came to read this psychological horror thriller. I know most classify it strictly as horror, but I actually found it to be more on the thriller side of the spectrum. All Rob ever wanted was a normal, quiet life: a husband, a job she loved, 2.5 kids and a white picket fence. On the outside looking in, it appeared her dream had been realized. Until the elder daughter attacked the youngest, prompting Rob to do a search of Callie's room and belongings, which yielded a gruesome discovery of tiny animal bones. A disturbing amount of animal bones, which is more than just a casual cause of concern to Rob because she knows exactly what it means: her past that she'd hoped died in the desert with her family has made itself known and those secrets are about to come to light. I loved Ward's writing style for this story, which is told in past and present tense. The mother daughter duo head back to Rob's childhood home so that Rob can explain to Callie their past, which will explain their future. As Rob tells of the family history, the author does so by putting us in Younger Rob's perspective, then reverting to present tense actions, conversations between Rob the mother and her daughter Callie. Throughout the entire story, I was never sure if the ghosts were real, or if they were just the ghosts of the past showing themselves as part of Rob's story. I love that we get the story chronologically as Rob goes through it from the beginning, so we learn things as she did over the course of her childhood to young adult years. I had a few suspicions as to what a few things meant, versus what they were introduced as, but I never figured out the actual truth on my own. Lots of twists, turns and intrigue that kept me turning those pages....well, it did once I abandoned the audiobook. I'm a huge lover of immersion reading, but I just could not do it in this case. I downright grew to hate the voices of the young girls the narrator used. Especially when it got a part where Callie would speak in emoji, which even when I read those parts, I couldn't stand it either. I was in complete agreement with Rob on that point. LOL SUNDIAL is one of the rare books that I loved for the plot and not the characters. I actually found all of the characters unreliable, untrustworthy and unlikeable. The plot though - it was so interesting and mysterious that I just had to know what was actually going on in this family dynamic. I was not disappointed! I'm very excited to read more of Catriona Ward's works - I added her other three novels to my TBR immediately upon finishing this one!