Author: Sally Hepworth
Year published: 2024
Category: Adult fiction (thriller)
Pages: 368 pages
Rating: 4 out of 5
Location: (my 2024 Google Reading map): Australia
Summary: For as long as they can remember, Jessica, Norah, and Alicia have been told how lucky they are. As young girls they were rescued from family tragedies and raised by a loving foster mother, Miss Fairchild, on an idyllic farming estate and given an elusive second chance at a happy family life.
But their childhood wasn’t the fairy tale everyone thinks it was. Miss Fairchild had rules. Miss Fairchild could be unpredictable. And Miss Fairchild was never, ever to be crossed. In a moment of desperation, the three broke away from Miss Fairchild and thought they were free. Even though they never saw her again, she was always somewhere in the shadows of their minds. When a body is discovered under the home they grew up in, the foster sisters find themselves thrust into the spotlight as key witnesses. Or are they prime suspects?
Review: This was another fun Book of the Month selection. They really do have good books on offer.
Jessica, Norah, and Alicia are not traditional sisters, they have a sisterhood forged on the shared experience of foster care. A horrible experience. Miss Fairchild is mean, demanding, unfair, and nasty. Is she the one who killed the child found under the house? Did one of the girls? I was left guessing until the very end when the perpetrator was revealed. On. The. Last. Page. I like that.
There were quite a few characters that were main in this novel and they each took turns telling the story from their point of view, both past and present. I like multiple narrators as I feel it propels the story along at a good pace and the reader gets a variety of perspectives on the events.
There are descriptions of physical and (mostly) emotional abuse in this book so readers should keep that in mind when deciding to read this novel. As always, I like the acknowledgements/after word. Hepworth talks a bit about foster care, the adults she spoke with who grew up in foster care, and I think that showed in this story.
Challenges for which this counts:
- Cloak and Dagger
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