By Rebecca Freeborn
Publisher/Year: Pantera Press 2021
Publisher description
‘There was a smug satisfaction in the knowledge that her friend’s picture-perfect life was tainted by a dirty secret. Quinn may be far from perfect, but she’d always have that over Hannah.’
Old friends Hannah and Quinn have grown apart over the years as their lives take them in opposite directions. Hannah cares for her three young children, her career on hold, while Quinn has a successful job in advertising, where she works hard and plays harder. But their friendship hangs together because of a terrible secret they share from their university days – a debt Hannah owes Quinn that they can never discuss.
Quinn has always kept her professional and personal lives separate, but these worlds collide when a colleague assaults her. As her life starts falling apart, Quinn decides to take revenge on her attacker – and she expects her old friend Hannah to help. But when things begin to unravel, Hannah must decide how much she’s willing to risk in order to return the favour.
A gripping examination of the darker side of friendship, power and loyalty. How far would you go to repay a debt?
Reviewer: Yvonne Sanders
The Favour is the fourth novel and third crime thriller by Rebecca Freeborn.
Set in Adelaide, the story tracks the relationship between two women whose tenuous friendship is bound by a dark secret neither can put behind them. The gravity of Hannah’s mistake as a university student, and Quinn’s decision to protect her, comes back to haunt her when Quinn’s life begins to unravel in the wake of her own rueful actions.
Hannah and Quinn are shaped by the unwelcome sexual attentions of conceited, self-absorbed men and disastrous relationships that make both characters familiar and relatable. The women are damaged and deeply flawed, vulnerable, yet strong. When Quinn’s superior at her public relations agency crosses a line, she calls on her friend to return the favour in helping her to right the wrong. Hannah reluctantly answers the call, and the pair embark on a dangerous game of cat and mouse to exact revenge.
Freeborn weaves Hannah’s current family life and Quinn’s obsessive ‘work hard, play hard’ ethic with events that unfolded twenty-one years earlier. This refreshing technique keeps the threads of past and present intimately connected, accelerating them towards a collision that reveals the sinister truth that sustains this uncertain friendship.
In The Favour Rebecca Freeborn has delivered an enthralling and suspenseful thriller that captivates from the outset. A well written, original and intriguing page turner.
https://www.panterapress.com.au/product/the-favour