Estranged by Philip Anthony Smith

A Beautiful Life, Slowly Poisoned

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ 

In Estranged, Philip Anthony Smith invites us into a life so beautifully crafted it almost feels like a dream—until you realize it's a trap.

Kara has everything: the sea-salt serenity of Cornwall, a restaurant born from passion, a husband who adores her, and a newborn daughter she’d do anything to protect. But all it takes is one message—one name from the past—for that carefully stitched life to start unraveling thread by thread.

Sabine doesn’t arrive with fire and brimstone. She arrives with softness, with stories, with a mother’s smile that's just a little too sharp. Smith captures this slow corruption masterfully, letting discomfort creep in like fog over the coast—quiet, cold, and impossible to escape.

What struck me most wasn’t just the suspense (though it’s there, and it’s thick). It was the grief. The buried guilt. The aching loyalty and the way love can blind you to danger. Kara’s descent into doubt feels tragically real—because the threats here aren’t just physical. They’re emotional. Psychological. Intimately personal.

This is a story about inheritance—the kind that stains instead of blesses. About how one wrong person, given an inch of grace, can dismantle everything.

Estranged is a slow-burning, elegantly sinister novel that slips under your skin. It’s not just about betrayal—it’s about how evil wears masks, sometimes even the kind that smile sweetly and call themselves “family.”

Dark, atmospheric, and deeply unsettling in the quietest ways—Smith has crafted a modern Gothic with bite.