My rating: 5 of 5 stars
“Childhood trauma does not come in one single package.”
----Asa Don Brown
Fiona Barton, the British bestselling author, is back with another page-turning and chilling psychological thriller called, The Child that revolves around three women, one our favorite journalist from Barton's previous book, Kate, and two different women, each grieving upon the news of an infant's skeletons recovered from a building site, as one strongly believes that it is her baby stolen the day she gave birth to her baby while the other is terrified about her long buried past has finally come to haunt her, can Kate uncover the mystery behind two women's grief?
Synopsis:
The author of the stunning New York Times bestseller The Widow returns with a brand-new novel of twisting psychological suspense.
As an old house is demolished in a gentrifying section of London, a workman discovers a tiny skeleton, buried for years. For journalist Kate Waters, it s a story that deserves attention. She cobbles together a piece for her newspaper, but at a loss for answers, she can only pose a question: Who is the Building Site Baby?
As Kate investigates, she unearths connections to a crime that rocked the city decades earlier: A newborn baby was stolen from the maternity ward in a local hospital and was never found. Her heartbroken parents were left devastated by the loss.
But there is more to the story, and Kate is drawn house by house into the pasts of the people who once lived in this neighborhood that has given up its greatest mystery. And she soon finds herself the keeper of unexpected secrets that erupt in the lives of three women and torn between what she can and cannot tell.
Kate Waters, the power journalist, is having a monotonous and a bit boring day in her office, when she chances upon the news of a baby's skeletons unearthed from a building site, that's all, nothing more either about the baby's identity or about the baby's mother or how the body came here, and like always, Kate tears that information from the newspaper and puts inside her handbag. Little did she knew, that a such a simple case of a baby's skeletons would turn into something huge and extremely brain-storming.
Angela panics as well as gets extremely excited when she chances upon the news of a baby's skeletons unearthed at a building site and not to mention, she chances upon this piece of news on a very special day, the day when her one day infant daughter was stolen from a hospital more than a decade ago, and since then she never got over her baby daughter whom she named Alicia and she never lost hope of finding her one day, and now she is filled with hope that maybe that baby is her Alicia. But did she ever knew that holding on to the lost past would cost her more than she can ever imagine?
Emma is struggling with herself not because of her mental illness but mainly because of the news of a baby's skeletons being found at a building site, where she used to live with her mom and her mom's boyfriend many decades ago, and now she is scared that the safe life that she built with her darling husband, Paul, is on the verge of coming undone as her long buried secrets are threatening to rip her life apart. But can she stay away that little piece of news which is every day growing like wild fire as the journalist tries to unearth the secrets behind the baby's identity?
Three protagonists and two of them wanting the same thing, the identity of the baby and how the baby got there, in the first place, while the other one knows a lot about the baby, but is scared to talk about her secrets. A power-packed plot infused with only brain-twisting turns and nail-biting suspense that is bound to throw any reader off their edges. And as for me, after reading this book, I'm vouching to read the author's debut book, which I bet is as epic as her new book. The story is not just a simple thriller, it has many dimensions and layers through which a reader can travel into the minds and lives of the three female protagonists, who will grip the minds of the readers like a chewing gum stuck at the bottom of the shoe.
The author's writing style is brilliant, laced perfectly with enough drama and suspense, which will gradually increase the tension of the readers with the plot's development. The narratives is equally engaging and extremely easy to comprehend with and the scenes are penned with utmost clarity and vividness that the readers will easily visualize them right before their own eyes. The pace is extremely fast, as I breezed through the entire plot within a couple of hours, well to be honest, it is mainly because of the plot being too addictive, yet the pace matters and that flows in sync with the story line.
The mystery is wrapped tightly into layers and layers of unpredictable twists and turns that often changes the whole course of story line and that will leave the readers in an awe, as it is hard to guess away the events of this story. And mystery is so alluring and chilling, that are readers will be bound to keep turning the pages of this book until the very end. The development of the whole mystery is dome strategically, smartly and quite strikingly and only a few authors, in modern times, can concoct a mystery like that.
The characters are purely extraordinary, no wait, I'm not exaggerating, it might seem like, I'm only talking good things about this book, but trust me, being a die-hard, mystery-genre fan, I barely found any flaw in this book that could turn me off. Even the characters shone like diamonds amidst their major red-signaled flaws and failures. Apart from Kate, both Angela and Emma are kind of mentally deranged, and this is where comes the teeny-tiny-bit of disappoint for me, I felt like Angela and Emma's mentally deranged sides could have been explored with a bit of depth rather than their constant obsession with the baby. Moreover, the whole angle of a past crime with baby's going missing too could have been explored a bit. Although, apart from those flaws, Kate, Angela and Emma left me ensnared with their issues, grief, secrets and mistakes. Even the supporting cast of characters are penned in an interesting manner.
In a nutshell, I've fallen head-over-heels in love with this author, who has now becomes of the favorite authors of mine. Moreover, with an enthralling and intriguing plot like that where the reader can't dare to spend a single moment looking away from it, this book must be read by one and all, well too much maybe, this book is highly recommended for all the crime-fiction readers out there.
Verdict: A gripping and page-turning psycho thrill, that only thrills! And no conditions apply!
Courtesy: Thanks to the publishers for giving me an opportunity to read and review this book.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Author Info:
My career has taken some surprising twists and turns over the years. I have been a journalist - senior writer at the Daily Mail, news editor at the Daily Telegraph, and chief reporter at The Mail on Sunday, where I won Reporter of the Year at the National Press Awards, gave up my job to volunteer in Sri Lanka and since 2008, have trained and worked with exiled and threatened journalists all over the world.
But through it all, a story was cooking in my head.
The worm of this book infected me long ago when, as a national newspaper journalist covering notorious crimes and trials, I found myself wondering what the wives of those accused really knew – or allowed themselves to know.
It took the liberation of my career change to turn that fascination into a tale of a missing child, narrated by the wife of the man suspected of the crime, the detective leading the hunt, the journalist covering the case and the mother of the victim.
Much to my astonishment and delight, The Widow is available now in the UK, and around the world in the coming months.
However, the sudden silence of my characters feels like a reproach and I am currently working on a second book.
My husband and I are living the good life in south-west France, where I am writing in bed, early in the morning when the only distraction is our cockerel, Sparky, crowing.
Visit her here
Book Purchase Links:
0 comments:
Post a Comment
Thanks for your feedback!