Review – The Child by Fiona Barton @figbarton @BerkleyPub @FirstToRead

The Child by Fiona Barton
Publisher: Berkley Publishing Group
Publication Date: June 27, 2017
Date Read: April 2, 2017
Source: First to Read
★★★☆☆

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.

Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Kobo | BAM!

This was a good story and I found it to be very readable.  I was really drawn into the idea behind the mystery.   I wasn’t blown away by the story but I did enjoy my time reading this one.  I found that the pages of this book went by pretty quickly.  I am glad that I decided to pick up this book.

This story is told from three main points of view.  Kate is a reporter who is intrigued by the discovery of the remains of a newborn baby and decides to try to find out what really happened.  Angela is the mother of a newborn baby that was taken from the hospital shortly after her birth.  Emma lived in the area that the baby’s remains were found when she was growing up and is very troubled by the news of the discovery.

I did like the characters in this book.  Kate was smart and resourceful.  She really did everything in her power to find out what really happened.  Angela has been through a nightmare.  I could only imagine how difficult the years have been since her baby disappeared.  Emma was a bit of a mystery at the beginning of the story.  She has had issues in her past and seemed somewhat fragile.  There were a lot of other interesting characters that are met in this story and I think each of them were well done.

The mystery seemed rather obvious to me pretty early in the book.  I kept waiting for something to happen that would make me realize that I was wrong but it never happened.  I have had other readers tell me that they didn’t figure anything out until the end of the book so maybe I will be in the minority with thinking the solution was too easy to figure out.  I really don’t like it when I can predict the solution to a mystery long before any of the detectives seem to have even the slightest clue.  I think it just takes something away from a mystery when you are able to figure things out too early.

I did like the author’s writing style.  I think that the multiple points of view worked really well in this story since each character had an important piece of the puzzle.  Besides the main mystery revolving around the baby’s remains there were some other issues that came up in this book and I thought everything worked very well together.

I would recommend this one to fans of mystery thrillers.  This is the first book by Fiona Barton that I have read and I look forward to reading more very soon.

I received an advance reader edition of this book from Berkley Publishing Group via First to Read.

About the Author

Fiona Barton was a senior writer at the Daily Mail, news editor at The Daily Telegraph, and chief reporter at The Mail on Sunday, where she won Reporter of the Year at the British Press Awards.

Author Links: Website | Facebook | Twitter

Related Posts