The Radleys by Matt Haig is a darkly humorous and insightful novel about a seemingly ordinary suburban family hiding a supernatural secret: they are abstaining vampires trying to live a normal human life.
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Book Blurb
Just about everyone knows a family like the Radleys. Many of us grew up next door to one. They are a modern family, averagely content, averagely dysfunctional, living in a staid and quiet suburban English town. Peter is an overworked doctor whose wife, Helen, has become increasingly remote and uncommunicative. Rowan, their teenage son, is being bullied at school, and their anemic daughter, Clara, has recently become a vegan.
They are typical, that is, save for one devastating exception: Peter and Helen are vampires and have—for seventeen years—been abstaining by choice from a life of chasing blood in the hope that their children could live normal lives.
One night, Clara finds herself driven to commit a shocking—and disturbingly satisfying—act of violence, and her parents are forced to explain their history of shadows and lies. A police investigation is launched that uncovers a richness of vampire history heretofore unknown to the general public. And when the malevolent and alluring Uncle Will, a practicing vampire, arrives to throw the police off Clara’s trail, he winds up throwing the whole house into temptation and turmoil and unleashing a host of dark secrets that threaten the Radleys’ marriage.
About the Author
Matt Haig is an author and journalist who has sold more than a million books in the UK. He’s passionate about mental health and his books often reflect that.
Matt Haig has written several nonfiction books, as well as fiction novels aimed at both children and adults. He has won the Blue Peter Book Award, the Smarties Book Prize and been nominated three times for the Carnegie Medal for his stories for children and young adults.
What to read next
If you enjoyed this novel, I would also recommend reading more Matt Haig books such as The Humans and How to Stop Time.
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