The Child (Kate Waters #2) by Fiona Barton ~ You Can’t Hide the Truth #ContemporaryFiction #FamilyDrama @figbarton

Author: Fiona Barton

Narrated by Clare Corbett, Adjoa Andoh, Finty Williams, Fenella Woolgar, Steven Pacey

Release Date: June 2017. Published by Transworld Digital

Category: Crime, Drama, Audiobook, Contemporary Fiction, Book Review

When a paragraph in an evening newspaper reveals a decades-old tragedy, most readers barely give it a glance. But for three strangers it’s impossible to ignore.

For one woman, it’s a reminder of the worst thing that ever happened to her.

For another, it reveals the dangerous possibility that her darkest secret is about to be discovered. And for the third, a journalist, it’s the first clue in a hunt to uncover the truth.

The Child’s story will be told.

Told from four perspectives—Angela, Kate, Jude and Emma—The Child is an intriguing tale.

It’s unclear for a quite a while what these four women have in common. Kate is a journalist looking for her next big story and when she reads about a baby’s skeleton being uncovered while clearing a building site, it piques her interest. Who would bury an infant in what would have been someone’s back garden? How did it die? And what happened to the mother? It seemed the bones were historic and the area is and has been full of rented accommodation with tenants changing on a regular basis. 

Kate Waters loved a needle-in-a-haystack job. The glint of something in the dark. Something to absorb her totally. Something to sink her teeth into. Something to get her out of the office.

During the course of her investigation, Kate is comes into contact with Angela, Emma and Jude. All three women have seen the newspaper article about the baby and all are affected by it. Angela’s first child, Alice, was taken from the hospital just after her birth. The person who took her was never found and Angela suffered a breakdown. The thoughts of what happened to Alice are always present and while she still feels guilt and the loss of her daughter, she’s always grateful for her other two children. 

Jude and Emma are mother and daughter who have a difficult relationship. Jude was always self-centred, putting her needs and wants before those of Emma. They were estranged for years after Jude chose the boyfriend she was obsessed with over Emma, and told her to leave when she was sixteen. Emma has kept a secret that festers away inside her, not even her husband is aware of what causes her anxieties and paranoia.

The problem is that a secret takes on a life of its own over time. I used to believe that if I didn’t think about what happened, it would shrivel and die. But it didn’t. It sits in the middle of a growing tangle of lies and fabrications, like a fat fly trapped in a spider’s web.

Cold case investigations always fascinate me, how evidence is gathered from way back, and coming from the perspective of a journalist rather than the police lends an edge to this story. I haven’t read the first book in the series but this can easily be read as a stand alone. Kate’s character is well developed and you get a good sense of who she is. A family woman who loves her job, she’s ambitious and purposeful but displays consideration and empathy for those she’s dealing with.

Fiona Barton has an easy to read/listen to writing style and short chapters keep the momentum going, although it’s a fairly slow start initially as the characters and their stories are introduced and developed. It was never going to be a fast paced drama but the pace does pick up after a while creating an emotional and suspenseful story, the plot threads woven together smoothly. There are several twists, some easy to guess, others definitely not, as the layers of the women’s lives are revealed, laying bare duplicity, half truths and lies. 

A excellent narration by the cast. I’m not always a fan of multiple narrators although it does work sometimes and in this case it worked very well within the structure of the book.

Book links~ Amazon UK | Amazon US | Hive 

About the Author

Fiona Barton’s debut, The Widow, was a Sunday Times and New York Times bestseller and has been published in 36 countries and optioned for television. Her second novel, The Child, was a Sunday Times bestseller. Born in Cambridge, Fiona currently lives in Sussex and south-west France. Previously, she 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.

While working as a journalist, Fiona reported on many high-profile criminal cases and she developed a fascination with watching those involved, their body language and verbal tics. Fiona interviewed people at the heart of these crimes, from the guilty to their families, as well as those on the periphery, and found it was those just outside the spotlight who interested her most . . .

Author links ~ Website | Twitter | Facebook