The Ledge

Twenty-four years ago, four boys were best friends, inseparable, like brothers. That was until the night that changed everything, when their friend Aaron ran away from home. Now, years later, human remains are uncovered in the forest and their secret is about to be exposed. When the friends reunite in their hometown, they must confront their demons and think back to how their lives got to this point of no return.

My synopsis of Christian White’s new and highly anticipated thriller is short, vague, and leaves plenty of room for speculation. But trust me when I say that this is a book you immediately need to sink your teeth into before trying to figure out anything for yourself. With an unreliable narrator, jaw-dropping plot twists that make you reread the pages in case you misinterpreted, and a stomach-sinking ending, The Ledge is a hurricane that you surrender to, letting the sequence of events unfold and carry you to that inevitable feeling of shock, dismay, and an instant temptation to read it all over again knowing what you know now. Drawing on the author’s love for William Golding’s Lord of the Flies and Stephen King’s It, we see the bond between these four boys. They treat each other like family without realising that family comes with accepting, and sometimes even following, the darkest parts of each other, and protecting one another, no matter the cost.

Set in regional Victoria with nostalgic flashbacks to the late ’90s, The Ledge brings home the classic feel of a small-town mystery, yet it is also something completely twisted and original. Finishing this book within 24 hours, it is not enough to say that it is unputdownable. If his other books hadn’t before, this novel certainly cements Christian White as an incredible, chilling voice in the Australian crime genre.