All That Is Lost Between Us

All That is Lost Between Us is a gripping thriller and yet it’s more than that; it’s a family drama, a compelling story of motherhood, marriage and the perils of adolescence.Seventeen-year-old Georgia is keeping a monumental secret from her best friend and cousin, Sophia. Sophia, meanwhile, is keeping her own secret from Georgia, and Georgia’s dad is keeping a secret from his whole family. Anya, Georgia’s mother, is struggling to keep her family together and longing to get close to her daughter and husband once more, but both keep pushing her away.One night in the dark hills of the English Lake District, the kids are walking home when a hit-and run driver comes from nowhere and seriously injures one of them, but why anyone would want to hurt one of these teenagers is a mystery.Georgia, a champion fell runner, has been building up to the big annual fell running competition and despite everything, still wants to run the race. As the mystery surrounding Georgia begins to unfold and her secret is about to go viral, the family is pushed to crisis point.The fast-paced narrative of All That is Lost Between Us is told from different characters’ points of view in each chapter with mother Anya, a school psychologist, told in the first person – giving her chapters an intimate, immediate feel and it is Anya who has our sympathy throughout this edge-of-your seat novel. As Anya gets closer to bringing the family’s secrets into the open, the novel draws to a nail-biting finish in time with Georgia’s running of the race.This compelling novel is set among the enchanting, misty landscape of the English Lake District, vividly evoked by Foster – surprisingly since this Australian writer resides in Perth – but she was born in the North of England and visited the Lake District as a child.The action takes place over just a few days, with flashbacks to the summer holidays to explain each of the characters’ current predicament, so the pace of this novel is intense, with clues and details teased out in Foster’s signature suspenseful style. All That is Lost Between Us is a novel that grabs you from the start and keeps you guessing until the end.