Isabella's Reading Corner: The Child

The Child

Author: Fiona Barton

Publication Date: June 27th 2017

Publisher: Penguin Random House Canada/Berkley (U.S.)

Everyone's got a story to tell.

When a baby's skeleton is found on a building site, reporter Kate Waters becomes fascinated by the case and decides to delve deeper in the hopes of landing a big story for her newspaper. Her investigation leads her to two women – Emma Simmonds and Angela Irving.

Decades earlier and shortly after giving birth, Angela's baby Alice disappeared from the maternity hospital. Although Angela still has hope, no trace of her child was ever found. When the bones are unearthed at the building site, she is convinced they are those of her lost daughter's. 

As a child, Emma and her mother Jude, lived in the house where the dead baby is found. Emma, now an adult and living with her supportive husband, is a book editor who suffers from severe anxiety. She also has many secrets. Over the years she has had a difficult and strained relationship with her mother. 

At the heart of it all is an intriguing mystery in a slowly developing and engrossing story. Who is the mother of the baby and how did it die? Who buried it? As the women's lives intersect, more is revealed about them while the pace quickens. 

The Child is well-written with a strong plot, detailed settings, complex characters and unexpected surprises. With it's intriguing premise and low-key suspense which builds to a crescendo, it is definitely a novel I recommend.

Thank you to Penguin Random House Canada and Netgalley for the eBook copy to review.

From the publisher:

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…

You can read my original Isabella's Reading Corner post on The Child here.