Yesterday Sydney was hit by a storm from the south east. Rain pounded on the tin roof, gutters overflowed, the temperature plummeted. In my inbox came an email from NetGalley stating that Penguin Australia had approved my request to review Honey Brown’s latest novel, Dark Horse, out this week. I’d read Brown’s Red Queen last year and have heard lots of good things about The Good Daughter, so I couldn’t resist downloading the ebook and peeking at the first page.

That was it for the rest of the day. I was hooked.

If you’re a fan of Jaye Ford’s Beyond Fear, Dawn Barker’s Fractured and Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl, you’re going to love Dark Horse. It’s quite a ride. I would have read it in one sitting, if I hadn’t had to sleep. I curled up in front of a glowing slow combustion stove and, while the weather went crazy outside, was swept into the drama. Brown has a style that I love: it’s immediate, the descriptions are fresh, the action is urgent. I could almost feel the Victorian alpine hills crowding in, felt every bump and jerk of the heroine’s ride up the mountain on her endurance-trained horse, held my breath at the enormity of what she faced going up, when she reached the summit and going down again. It’s that kind of book: suspenseful, urgent, adrenaline-pumping.

And it’s clever. I’m used to twists in suspense fiction and I can usually read the signs. This book proved no exception, except I realised I was being played. Every time I anticipated the narrative, there was an unexpected payoff; each time I thought something was unlikely or stretched credulity, it proved well motivated or explained.

It was the perfect read for a rainy day, better than a movie. (Far better than its trailer.)

Do I go away with things to think about? I’m not sure. It ranges over what, to me, is very interesting territory: the extremes of human emotions and behaviour; infidelity; depression/mental illness; the breakdown of relationships; childhood trauma and its effects on the family. It belongs to the “family drama with crime” genre that writers like Wendy James and Caroline Overington are so successfully carving a niche in. It’s edgy. It’s sexy, too. But I’m not sure the degree to which it touched me emotionally and intellectually, or simply thrilled me. (To explore this further would necessitate spoilers.)

What it did do is confirm for me that Australian women psychological suspense writers are right up there among the best in the genre. I’m also glad I have two more Honey Brown books, The Good Daughter and After the Darkness, tucked away for another rainy day.

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This review counts towards the Australian Women Writers Challenge. It has been reviewed elsewhere for the challenge by Simone at Great Aussie Reads and by Brenda in Goodreads.