Killer Review: The Other Child by Lucy Atkins

*The Killer Reviews are reviews from our feature 'A Killer Season'. To show our love for psychological thrillers we are reviewing psychological thrillers of which much fuss has been made about*

PURCHASE |Goodreads. 

My Synopsis 

Imagine This: You've been swept in a whirlwind romance. And suddenly you are moving from England to the states, with your son from another relationship, carrying a new baby as a sign of your new budding relationship with this hot-shot doctor.

But things in the Boston suburbs are not as they seem. For starters all the other kids hate your son for being having an accent. There are also creepy sounds of someone breaking and entering your new home. You are sure of this. Even though your husband who's mostly away doesn't believe you. Then soon you begin receiving threatening notes and you really feel someone is around every corner watching you.

But of course, you have no idea what the main threat is.

Tess Gallo's life summed up for your delight. 

My Review  

I liked this book.

The storyline is good. It really gives this novel a domestic thriller feel being set in a suburb and all. And who doesn't love a storyline they can all relate to?——★

You'd sympathize with the main character. Her choices are questionable. Because who'd leave dreary London for sweltering Boston (with a man well into his forties who has never married). She's quite a nag though really. Always worrying and going on and on about the same things. But you'd get used to this character flaw. She's only seeking answers to puzzling questions even you can't wrap your head around. A star.——★★

Other characters you'd possibly fall in love with are the deranged, obsessed neighbour next-door Helena, and the best friend Nell back in London who can't help but give our lead more headaches with her persistent habit of going to Google for everything.——★★★ 

As I said, I liked this book. But heck, there were so many twists—it got so much I couldn't wrap my head around it. The blurb says, 'Then she makes a jaw-dropping discovery...' but frankly Tess makes too many jaw-dropping discoveries (that do not change the course of the story) its hard to tell which the writer means. I expected dark, and chilling but this title was nowhere intense as the Atkins' debut.

My rating:  A 3.5 stars.

The Other Child is available on Amazon. 

I recommend this book to anyone who wants a psychological thriller that shares close boundaries with a domestic thriller. Anyone who's in for a book in which they can't figure anything out—highly unpredictable—should go get this

My work not done here. Off to post my review on Goodreads and Amazon. 

Blog Tour: The Other Child By Lucy Atkins

We are celebrating the release of one of my favorite Lucy's new book! Lucy Atkins, whose debut, The Missing One was thoroughly enjoyed by me, is up on our blog discussing her reading life! Find out her book obsession growing up!

My reading life

Ok, so here’s a list of classic books that I did not read as a child:

- Wind in the Willows - Secret Garden - The Hobbit - Anne of Green Gables - Alice in wonderland - The Railway Children - Any of the Famous Five books…

I could go on….It wasn’t that I came from a home of non-readers. My parents are book lovers, and our house was stuffed with books. I didn’t read these books because I was mad about horses, and so from the age of about 6 to 14 I read nothing but Pony books. I can still recite the opening lines of my favourite, Rebel Pony.

My mother was a lexicographer (she wrote the Collins Robert English-French dictionary) and she would come back from book fairs with bags stuffed full of small, hardback pony books that she got for 20p each. I read and re-read those books. My mother sometimes put a different book on my bedside table, but I generally ignored it, and she never made me feel this was wrong. She never pressurized me that I ‘should’ be reading a certain kind of book. She simply enabled my love of pony books. As a result, I came to see all books as magical – feeding my imagination, my dreams, my passion.

I did move on from pony books as a teenager, to novels by Thomas Hardy, DH Lawrence, The Brontes. I didn’t find this a leap because I trusted books to let me in – I wasn’t intimidated by them, because I’d learned that books were my friends. Reading through childhood and adolescence opened up new chambers in my mind. It expanded my vocabulary, it taught me about the world, it introduced me to feelings and concepts I had not yet experienced. But above all, it made me a writer.

I wrote and illustrated my first ‘novella’ – you guessed it, a pony book! – when I was nine years old. My mother laminated it and I still have it. It felt entirely natural to me to write as well as to read. I never thought about it, or questioned it. The two activities seemed like part of the same whole.

I’ve now read those children’s classics out loud to my own three children, who have loved them, but I’ll always be grateful to the pony books of my childhood: they were the greatest gift.

Learn more about Lucy’s books at www.lucyatkins.com Follow lucy on Twitter @lucyatkins. Or Facebook: Lucy Atkins Writer.

Find out more about The Other Child.

Blurb: Sometimes a lie seems kinder than the truth ... but what happens when that lie destroys everything you love?

When Tess is sent to photograph Greg, a high profile paediatric heart surgeon, she sees something troubled in his face, and feels instantly drawn to him. Their relationship quickly deepens, but then Tess, single mother to nine-year-old Joe, falls pregnant, and Greg is offered the job of a lifetime back in his hometown of Boston. Before she knows it, Tess is married, and relocating to the States. But life in an affluent American suburb proves anything but straightforward.

Unsettling things keep happening in the large rented house. Joe is distressed, the next-door neighbours are in crisis, and Tess is sure that someone is watching her. Greg's work is all-consuming and, as the baby's birth looms, he grows more and more unreachable. Something is very wrong, Tess knows it, and then she makes a Jaw-dropping discovery...

Reviews: 'Truly unnerving. The neck-prickling suspense starts on the very first page, building and building until I wanted to get in the car and drive to Boston to rescue Tess and Joe myself. Atkins perfectly captures the vulnerability that comes with moving overseas, away from friends and support networks, and uses it expertly in this compelling novel. Not just one-more-page gripping but perceptive and beautifully written' Lucie Whitehouse, author of Before We Met.

'Taut, tense, and beautifully written. I held my breath between chapters and didn't sleep until I reached the end' Clare Mackintosh, author of I Let You Go.

'Tense, involving and clever. I defy you not to get hooked' Jane Lythell, author of After the Storm.

Purchase| Goodreads| Quercus.