Our Perfect Holiday
- Judith D Collins
- Jun 13
- 4 min read
By: Daniel Hurst
Narrator: Melanie Crawley, Matthew Biddulph
Hachette UK
ISBN: 9781807221560
Publisher: Bookouture
Publication Date: 06/16/2026
Format: Other
My Rating: 4 Stars (ARC)
(Previously titled I Shouldn't Have Come Here.)
It was the perfect trip, until it ended in murder…
I stand on the balcony with my gorgeous husband, Reuben, by my side. My family have returned to this beautiful French hotel to celebrate my mother’s seventieth birthday.
The sun is shining and everything seems perfect. It’s paradise but I feel like I’m trapped…
Because twenty years ago someone was killed in the glittering swimming pool.
I watch as my children run around excitedly, my parents sip cocktails, and my brother throws his head back as he laughs. But a shiver runs down my spine because I know what really happened all those years ago.
I have to smile and lie to my family because of the secrets I’m keeping. Then I receive a text message, and the words turn my heart to ice:
You should never have come back here…
I can’t sleep and I’m constantly looking over my shoulder. And then one night as Reuben and I stroll in the hotel grounds, I see a woman’s lifeless body in the pool. My mouth opens in a silent scream. It’s happening all over again.
Are my precious family now in danger too?
From the number one bestselling author Daniel Hurst, I Shouldn’t Have Come Here is an absolutely addictive ‘just one more page’ psychological thriller that will have you questioning everything until you reach the final, jaw-dropping twist. Perfect for fans of Freida McFadden, T M Logan and Lisa Jewell.
My Review
Get ready to pack your bags for a sun-drenched trip straight into a living nightmare with Daniel Hurst’s latest jaw-dropping psychological thriller, Our Perfect Holiday.
Hurst masterfully transforms a glittering, luxury French vacation into a claustrophobic cage of dark family secrets and relentless blackmail that will leave you completely breathless.
Sun, Sand, and Sociopaths!
🚀 Elevator Pitch
A glamorous family vacation at a luxury French hotel turns into a waking nightmare when a woman is found dead in the pool—forcing one guest to face a terrifying truth: someone knows what she did in that same pool twenty years ago.
📍 Setting
A glittering, isolated luxury hotel in the sun-drenched countryside of France, centered around a pristine, deceptively beautiful swimming pool.
✨ Vibe
Sun-soaked paranoia, claustrophobic family tension, and high-anxiety dread. It feels like a glossy postcard masking a rotten secret.
📚 Genre
Psychological Thriller / Domestic Suspense / Holiday Noir.
🪵 Themes
~The inescapability of past guilt
~Toxic family dynamics and hidden resentment
~The fragility of curated perfection
~Blackmail and psychological isolation
👥 Standout Characters
~The Protagonist: Hyper-vigilant, deeply paranoid, and completely trapped between her husband Reuben, her family, and her terrifying past.
~The Blackmailer: An unseen, omnipresent shadow weaponizing a single cell phone screen to dismantle a family piece by piece.
✍️ Author Writing Standout
Daniel Hurst excels at weaponizing mundane modern technology. The relentless, cold format of the text messages contrasts brilliantly against the warm, luxurious French backdrop, pacing the book like a ticking time bomb.
💡 Takeaway
You can change your name, your life, and your country, but you can never outrun the water that remembers your deepest sins.
🏷️ Title Significance
Our Perfect Holiday is dripping with dark irony. It mocks the carefully curated facade the family projects to the world, highlighting the sharp contrast between a dream vacation and a domestic execution chamber.
🌪️ Metaphor
A pristine swimming pool that looks inviting on the surface, but conceals a deadly, freezing undercurrent beneath the glittering water.
📖 Why You Should Read
If you love fast-paced, bingeable thrillers where a sunny paradise transforms into a claustrophobic prison of secrets, this is your perfect summer read.
💭 My Thoughts
Check in for the luxury. Stay for the murder. Our Perfect Holiday by Daniel Hurst is the ultimate sun-soaked nightmare!
Daniel Hurst hooks you by the throat right from the first chapter. The transition of this book from its original title (I Shouldn't Have Come Here) to Our Perfect Holiday emphasizes the brilliant fake-out of the plot. Watching the protagonist try to play the happy wife and daughter while her phone delivers precise psychological strikes is agonizingly tense. The pacing is relentless, and Hurst keeps you guessing about who is holding the camera—and the phone—until the final, breathless splash.
⚖️ Verdict ⭐⭐⭐⭐ (4/5 Stars)
"A sharp, addictive, sun-drenched nightmare that will make you look twice at your next hotel booking."
🔀 Recs
~The Holiday Home and The Family Trip by Daniel Hurst
~If you enjoy Daniel Hurst's fast-paced, twisty, and highly addictive domestic psychological thrillers, you will love these authors who master the same quick-reading, popcorn-thriller style: Freida McFadden, Emily Shiner, John Marrs, Miranda Rijks, Kaira Rouda, Keri Beevis, or Jeneva Rose.
Special thanks to Bookouture and NetGalley for sharing an advanced reading copy in exchange for my honest thoughts.
@JudithDCollins | #JDCMustReadBooks
My Rating: 4 Stars
Pub Date: June 19, 2026
June 2026 Must-Read Books
About the Author
Daniel Hurst is an Amazon #1 bestselling author of fast paced psychological thrillers. His most popular titles include Til Death Do Us Part, The Couple’s Revenge and The Doctor's Wife, the latter title reaching #1 on the Amazon UK Kindle store in February 2023.
A regular KDP Select All Star since he became a full-time author in 2021, Daniel prides himself on writing fast, releasing stories often and engaging with his readers. WEBSITE
