The Child

3/5 stars

Kate Waters can sense this will be a good story. She is ready to track answers and get the exclusive scoop for her newspaper. A baby’s remains were found. As she begins to uncover who this child was, she learns of another tragedy-several years earlier, a newborn was stolen from the hospital and never found. Kate has no clue if/how these stories are linked, but she’s determined to get to the bottom of it. 

This book took me a very long time to read. The pandemic is partially to blame–the book features heavy topics that were hard to read at a time like this. The chapters were very short (sometimes only one page) and changed character perspectives. Normally, I’d like this. With the amount of characters and in-chapter flashbacks, I found the format to be more confusing that I would’ve liked. 

The beginning was slow. As two mysteries are being established, I felt like much of the first half was developing characters and giving context. Once the background was established, the story really picked up. I couldn’t put it down for the last 25%. I was expecting the twist, but predicting it didn’t ruin the story for me. Overall, this was a pretty good psychological thriller. Had the build up been pared down, I wouldn’t enjoyed it much more.