Where the missing go: Book review

Book blurb

MY NAME IS KATE.

I volunteer at a missing persons helpline – young people who have run away from home call me and I pass on messages to their loved ones, no questions asked.

I don’t get many phone calls, and those I do are usually short and vague, or pranks.

But today a girl named Sophie called.

I’m supposed to contact her parents to let them know their child is safe.
The problem is, Sophie isn’t safe.
AND SOPHIE IS MY DAUGHTER.
Available here 

My review 

As a NetGalley book reviewer I’m spoilt for choice as regards reading material. But when I read Jo Robertson’s, (my chestnut reading tree) review I hopped across to Amazon to pre-order and promptly forgot all about it until I needed something for Alexa to read to me when ironing. Yeah, I know, but I hate ironing and Alexa is my new bestie. 

Needless to say, when I’d ironed everything in the house, I soon realised that I had to bite the bullet and flip to reading from my Kindle and I finished in one sitting. 

For a debut this is superb: a nail-biting twisty turny thriller which would make an excellent movie. It’s difficult to review something like this without spoilers, but it’s impossible until quite near the end to know what’s going on. Kate is excellently drawn as an ordinary mother in an extraordinary situation , which is after all any parent’s worst nightmare. What she does is what we’d do, take up the gauntlet when the police seem to be flagging. What she finds is so unexpected… 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟

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The curious heart of Ailsa Rae: Book review

Book blurb 

Ailsa Rae is learning how to live.

She’s only a few months past the heart transplant that – just in time – saved her life. Life should be a joyful adventure. But . . .Her relationship with her mother is at breaking point and she wants to find her father.

Have her friends left her behind?

And she’s felt so helpless for so long that she’s let polls on her blog make her decisions for her. She barely knows where to start on her own. Then there’s Lennox. Her best friend and one time lover. He was sick too. He didn’t make it. And now she’s supposed to face all of this without him.

Available to pre-order here

My review 

Cleverly written and with a great story line but that’s not why this book touched me…

A very long time ago, working as a student nurse, I was involved in something similar. Working on nightduty the call came at 3am that the long-awaited heart had been found and within an hour an air ambulance had arrived to whisk her on her journey of a lifetime. As memories go it is a distant one. It happened in the 80’s and is something I haven’t thought of in years. But it’s all there in this book; the hope, expectation and fear of the future. And in being given that second chance the realisation that there’s an expectation to make the most of it. Finally there’s the added edge of sadness as, of course, there’s tragedy lingering…another person who hasn’t been as lucky, another set of grieving parents… 

Excellently executed

🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟