Review: Perfectly Preventable Deaths

Perfectly Preventable Deaths by Deirdre Sullivan
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Madeline and Catlin find their new home, Ballyfrann, a bit...well...odd. It's full of Collinses for a start, one family grown out of all recognition. There's the bodies that keep turning up – birds, foxes – and the strange feeling of warmth in the middle of winter, and Mamó, their new stepfather's cousin, with her herbs and potions. And, of course, there's the missing girls; teenagers have gone missing in Ballyfrann for many years. But that won't happen to Madeline or Catlin, of course. They're perfectly safe...

An atmospheric, slightly terrifying read. The language is amazing, lyrical sentences that lull you into thinking nothing bad can possibly happen – usually immediately followed by something bad happening. The increasing fear as things start to go wrong will ensure you can't put this one down. Deirdre has captured perfectly the relationship between siblings, sometimes prickly, sometimes supportive, always there for each other. I'd love to meet Mamó for real, assuming I could get her to answer my questions!

A great, chilling read.


Receiving a proof did not affect my review in any way.



"What will your Galway boyfriend be called?" I ask.

"Something pure Galway like Peadar or Ultan," she says.

"Mine will be called Fenian," I tell her. "Or maybe Mountain. Mountain Boyfriend O'Galway."

"That's good," she says.

I tell her that I know. We make her bed and then we go into my room and make mine. I quite like making beds. When you're putting the duvet cover on you can pretend to be a ghost. Our rooms are almost identical, mirror images, only with different tapestries and views. Every room in Brian's castle has a view. It's a bit much, really. All that landscape.

"Ultan will be able to drive a tractor," Catlin says, as though this is an extremely desirable quality in a man.

Which it may well be. We're in the country. There are different rules.

"My one will have ROAD FRONTAGE," I tell her, "and feed abandoned baby lambs by the hearth. With his big Galway hands." I think I've won.

"Ah. Mountain sounds like a sweetheart," she says. "Ultan will have a shock of bright red curls."

"Mountain will have straw instead of hair. Like a thatched cottage."

"That is incredibly Galway of him," she says, and I can tell that she's impressed.

View all my reviews