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The Silent Daughter
'Schoolgirl missing', the ticker reads, and the camera cuts to a girl's face. Blonde hair waterfalling over her shoulders, serious eyes, lips a little parted like she's about to speak. That's when I realize I've been holding my breath, because the gasp when I inhale almost chokes me.
Sadie Kelly has lost her job. Until last month, she was a teacher at Horton College – the same high school she went to ten years ago along with her best friend, Fiona. But Fiona died in an accident on their graduation night, in circumstances Sadie's spent the last ten years trying to forget, and since then nothing's been the same.
Now Sadie's back in the small Connecticut town where she grew up, jobless and living temporarily with Fiona's mother. But when she hears that a Horton schoolgirl has gone missing, everything changes. Because the missing girl is Devon Hundley - daughter of Philip Hundley, a man Sadie knows all too well…
Sadie Kelly has lost her job. Until last month, she was a teacher at Horton College – the same high school she went to ten years ago along with her best friend, Fiona. But Fiona died in an accident on their graduation night, in circumstances Sadie's spent the last ten years trying to forget, and since then nothing's been the same.
Now Sadie's back in the small Connecticut town where she grew up, jobless and living temporarily with Fiona's mother. But when she hears that a Horton schoolgirl has gone missing, everything changes. Because the missing girl is Devon Hundley - daughter of Philip Hundley, a man Sadie knows all too well…
287 pages, Paperback
First published May 6, 2020
About the author
Claire Amarti
5 books160 followersHi there! I’m an author who writes suspense stories about ordinary women – women like the ones we all know and love – who find out that their ordinary lives may not be quite so ordinary after all! My hope is that you will root for them, fear for them, and find yourself holding your breath when the action starts to get a little hairy!
When I’m not writing, I can be found strolling the streets of Brooklyn, New York City, my adopted home, dodging pigeons and traffic. I moved here a little over eight years ago from Ireland, and never looked back. To me there’s nothing more wonderful than that feeling of finding – or making! – a new home, that mixture of excitement at finding a place in the world, and the comfort of being able to come back to it time and again. That’s what reading feels like for me… and for you too I suspect! And it's what I love about writing. A good book should be a home too: a place where you can trust that you’ll find a wonderful adventure, and then land safe and sound at the end of it all, ready to do it all again another day!
When I’m not writing, I can be found strolling the streets of Brooklyn, New York City, my adopted home, dodging pigeons and traffic. I moved here a little over eight years ago from Ireland, and never looked back. To me there’s nothing more wonderful than that feeling of finding – or making! – a new home, that mixture of excitement at finding a place in the world, and the comfort of being able to come back to it time and again. That’s what reading feels like for me… and for you too I suspect! And it's what I love about writing. A good book should be a home too: a place where you can trust that you’ll find a wonderful adventure, and then land safe and sound at the end of it all, ready to do it all again another day!
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 712 reviews
May 7, 2020
Sadie Kelly, a teacher at Horton College until last month, has moved back to her childhood town.... staying not not with her family, but with a close friend's mother. Her friend died 10 years ago in circumstances that she's been trying to forget ever since.
On TV news is a report that Devon Hundley, a 16 year old girl attending Horton College has gone missing. Sadie is taken aback .. Devon is the daughter of Philip Hundley ..a man Sadie knows all too well.
Sadie can’t stop thinking about the last time she saw Devon. It was the day Sadie left Horton for good, and heard Devon murmur four little words as she walked away. Four words Sadie prayed she had misheard:
I know your secret.
This is a well written, skillfully plotted, suspense story about a woman trying to overcome her past. She left her hometown literally the day she graduated and tried to never look back. The suspense starts early and maintains a steady pace until the unexpected ending.
Many thanks to the author for the digital copy of this debut psychological suspense. Read and reviewed voluntarily, opinions expressed here are unbiased and entirely my own.
On TV news is a report that Devon Hundley, a 16 year old girl attending Horton College has gone missing. Sadie is taken aback .. Devon is the daughter of Philip Hundley ..a man Sadie knows all too well.
Sadie can’t stop thinking about the last time she saw Devon. It was the day Sadie left Horton for good, and heard Devon murmur four little words as she walked away. Four words Sadie prayed she had misheard:
I know your secret.
This is a well written, skillfully plotted, suspense story about a woman trying to overcome her past. She left her hometown literally the day she graduated and tried to never look back. The suspense starts early and maintains a steady pace until the unexpected ending.
Many thanks to the author for the digital copy of this debut psychological suspense. Read and reviewed voluntarily, opinions expressed here are unbiased and entirely my own.
May 7, 2020
I really wanted to like this book based on the description of the book. Although I didn't hate it, I just didn't love it. I felt too much time was spent on Sadie's inner dialect and repeating many of the same things about her past.
The twists were all shoved in almost at the end, which seemed almost like a rushed ending. I would have liked one or two of the small twists revealed earlier in the book. The characterizations were average and didn't really leave me being thrilled with any of them. It's great to have a story with several different story lines going as long as they tie in well together. I don't feel this story did that until that rushed ending.
I do appreciate Claire Amarti taking on a real life issue of human predators and the complications life can bring to anyone. I also like the friendship between Fiona and Sadie and would have enjoyed a few more pages discussing some of their earlier years.
All in all, it wasn't a bad read. I just would have liked a little more.
I received this ARC from Booksprout and appreciate being able to read and review this story.
The twists were all shoved in almost at the end, which seemed almost like a rushed ending. I would have liked one or two of the small twists revealed earlier in the book. The characterizations were average and didn't really leave me being thrilled with any of them. It's great to have a story with several different story lines going as long as they tie in well together. I don't feel this story did that until that rushed ending.
I do appreciate Claire Amarti taking on a real life issue of human predators and the complications life can bring to anyone. I also like the friendship between Fiona and Sadie and would have enjoyed a few more pages discussing some of their earlier years.
All in all, it wasn't a bad read. I just would have liked a little more.
I received this ARC from Booksprout and appreciate being able to read and review this story.
July 28, 2020
Still trying to wrap my mind around this one...
Ok, so there was murder, cheating, abuse, alcoholism, pedophilia, rape, long lost relatives, more cheating, more murder, bullying, drug abuse and sexual misconduct in this book. It was just too much. By the end the story was so convoluted I just wanted it to end.
Ok, so there was murder, cheating, abuse, alcoholism, pedophilia, rape, long lost relatives, more cheating, more murder, bullying, drug abuse and sexual misconduct in this book. It was just too much. By the end the story was so convoluted I just wanted it to end.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
May 2, 2020
Sadie Kelly lost her best friend, Fiona, in high school and still hasn't fully dealt with the loss.
Present day, Sadie has just lost her job at the prestigious Horton College and is living with Fiona's mother (because Sadie and her mother don't get along). She's having trouble finding a new job due to the circumstances of her job loss and has turned to Benzos to help her cope. On top of all that, one of her former students from Horton College has just went missing, and Sadie has a personal tie to the missing girl's father.
Does that sound like a lot? It is. In fact, there was just too much going on and the whole thing was overly complicated to the point of being nonsense.
Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.
Present day, Sadie has just lost her job at the prestigious Horton College and is living with Fiona's mother (because Sadie and her mother don't get along). She's having trouble finding a new job due to the circumstances of her job loss and has turned to Benzos to help her cope. On top of all that, one of her former students from Horton College has just went missing, and Sadie has a personal tie to the missing girl's father.
Does that sound like a lot? It is. In fact, there was just too much going on and the whole thing was overly complicated to the point of being nonsense.
Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.
May 26, 2020
I thought this book was very well done, very suspenseful and very gripping. There wasn't a point in the book when I lost interest or I felt it lagging.
There were constant twists and turns in the story that kept me guessing until the very end.
The one thing that I noticed was that this book took place in Connecticut with seemingly American characters, but I could easily see this taking place in the UK instead. I picked up on a few things that I've seen before by British/Irish authors (I've read that the author, Claire, is Irish.. so I get this!). Maybe not the best example but the first one that comes to mind it the line "We'll be off now, love" isn't a thing I hear in American-English books/characters - but then again that character was "part-Irish." There was a Celtic flair to this story that added to another twist.
I would recommend this book, especially if you love thrillers with women as the main characters. I would read more by this author!
I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.
There were constant twists and turns in the story that kept me guessing until the very end.
The one thing that I noticed was that this book took place in Connecticut with seemingly American characters, but I could easily see this taking place in the UK instead. I picked up on a few things that I've seen before by British/Irish authors (I've read that the author, Claire, is Irish.. so I get this!). Maybe not the best example but the first one that comes to mind it the line "We'll be off now, love" isn't a thing I hear in American-English books/characters - but then again that character was "part-Irish." There was a Celtic flair to this story that added to another twist.
I would recommend this book, especially if you love thrillers with women as the main characters. I would read more by this author!
I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.
May 19, 2020
This is the first book I’ve read from this author, but definitely won’t be the last. I enjoyed the way we gradually got to know Sadie, and all of her dimensions. The boarding school setting is the perfect place for mystery and intrigue. The story skillfully unravels to reveal many secrets and surprises.
June 27, 2020
Weird
This entire book makes almost no sense. I did read it all the way through waiting for some real conclusion but there was none.
This entire book makes almost no sense. I did read it all the way through waiting for some real conclusion but there was none.
June 16, 2020
A young woman named Sadie Kelly returns to a small town she has so eagerly left a decade ago, a private school (as a teacher) she found profoundly traumatizing as a kid, a woman she loves as her own mother, a mother she doesn’t really know and a bucketload of difficult memories associated with the death of her childhood best friend. Soon after a 16 year old star swimmer at the school, a girl from a wealthy local family, disappears and so much of the long buried ugliness starts rising back up for Sadie that she can barely hold on to her sanity. Basically this is yet another one of those female driven female authored thrillers that are so very popular, but it turned out much nicer than one might have expected from a random kindle freebie or from a debut novel for that matter. There are some things the author got very right, the writing is uniformly good, dynamic, well paced, yet measured in its approach to revealing Sadie’s and others’ around her secrets. Also, refreshingly, no split narrative here, straight up first person narration all the way set overwhelmingly in present time with a few minor digressions into the past, works very well, draws you in more, makes it seems more like a dramatic work of fiction, albeit with some deaths thrown in. The suspense is taut and maintained throughout and there are no cheap tricks, you follow Sadie along to solve the mysteries around her and yes, there are plenty of surprises along the way, plot twists and all. No one is what they seem or who they seem, because everyone’s got secrets they hide. In the end, in fact, every single person has had some sort of a 180 or at least a 90 degree turn from how they initially appeared. All of that was done right, the novel read quickly and was fun. But…here comes the but….the author chose to make it so timely of a novel that it just had to throw a message into the narrative. Not weave in or incorporate cleverly, but throw it in, by the bucket. Which is to say that while the rest of the narrative was nicely subtle, the message in the end got delivered so heavyhandedly, it nearly tipped the cart over. And the message is…men are evil and do evil things. The inevitable byproduct of MeToo and rampant feminism and no one is saying that’s wrong, but let’s have some balance, maybe? I mean, the author’s made just about every single man in the book some sort of a manipulator, abuser and predator, scumbag and/or rapist. It even has Sadie rethink her own recent affair and recast the man as a perp of some sort, someone who has preyed on her instead of engaged in a seemingly perfectly consensual affair between two consenting adults. And yes, one of the male characters is all those things, a completely reprehensible sort of predator, and it would have been enough, it would have been plenty to deliver the author’s message, but for some reason she wanted to go for the overkill as in she really wanted to give the microphone (no, really megaphone or a loudspeaker) to all the silenced daughters. She did, seriously, it's in the afterword. Maybe the debut overeagerness. Who knows. At any rate it kind of soured the ending in a way for me. But then again maybe it dramatically improved the book for some. Obviously there are a lot of things bubbling over in the primordial stew of women’s oppression and it should have the attention it deserves and all that, but for the sake of literature, how about some subtlety and nuance. Other than that, a very decent suspense thriller. And read so very quickly.
July 6, 2020
Excellent read with an ending I never saw coming!
July 22, 2020
Quick read, grand plot. Nothing too exciting, I could round it up to a 4, but no.
Shelved as 'dnf'
September 20, 2020DNF at 10%. I didn’t like the writing, and the story was boring.
May 30, 2021
This book was a fast read. It held my interest from beginning to end and had a good flow. There were a few times when there was a confusing time shift , but I'd read the paragraph over and and get re-oriented into the story. The book is mostly told in the present, going back occasionally to 10 years earlier, or a few months or year earlier. The prestigious Horton School, where Sadie and her best friend Fiona had attended and graduated from as scholarship students, plays a huge rule in their lives.
The book opens with Sadie, and Fiona's mother Jan ,visiting Fiona's grave. Fiona died on high school graduation night ten years earlier. After graduating from Horton, Sadie went to Stanford. Then she became an international teacher, teaching in places like England and Hong Kong. She was born and raised in a small, blue-collar town in Connecticut. When she and Fiona went to Horton on scholarship, they were looked down upon by the wealthy students who made up most of Horton's student population. It wasn't just their clothes. Fiona would try to speak up in class, and the teachers would ask her to repeat herself several times, because of her accent. Sadie just laid low and tried not to draw attention to herself. Fiona couldn't help but draw attention to herself, so she was bullied while Sadie was just ignored. Fiona's self-esteem plummeted, which led to tragic decisions that caused her death. In the present day, Sadie actually accepts a job offer to teach at Horton. She knows it's not a good idea, but seems unable to resist going back. Only weeks into her second year, the head of the school, Mrs. Thorne, tells Sadie she isn't a good fit. There had been no previous indication of a problem, this is out of the blue. Sadie is suddenly out of a job. It had been a live-in position, so she now has to find a new place to live. Jan invites Sadie to live with her. Besides being her best friend's mother, she has also been a "stand-in" mother to Sadie, whose own mother is distant. Then, a 16 year old girl ,Devon, disappears from the school. Mrs. Thorne calls Sadie and offers her job back to her. Now that the school has become involved in a scandal, Sadie's replacement apparently backed out. So Sadie goes back to the school. Strange things start to happen to Sadie. It appears someone is stalking her. Sadie feels guilty about Fiona's death for some reason, and also alludes to a second secret, involving Stanford, which turns out to be a whopper. Could there be a connection? There are things her mother is withholding from her, and Jan also appears to not be telling Sadie everything. Jan hires a handyman who has a secret of his own. I was curious how all of this was going to fit together. There seemed to be so many characters who were hiding something. I was hoping the ending wasn't going to fall apart, the way suspense novels with a big build-up sometimes do. And it didn't! All of these seemingly disparate story line threads actually did weave together into a coherent and satisfying resolution.
The book opens with Sadie, and Fiona's mother Jan ,visiting Fiona's grave. Fiona died on high school graduation night ten years earlier. After graduating from Horton, Sadie went to Stanford. Then she became an international teacher, teaching in places like England and Hong Kong. She was born and raised in a small, blue-collar town in Connecticut. When she and Fiona went to Horton on scholarship, they were looked down upon by the wealthy students who made up most of Horton's student population. It wasn't just their clothes. Fiona would try to speak up in class, and the teachers would ask her to repeat herself several times, because of her accent. Sadie just laid low and tried not to draw attention to herself. Fiona couldn't help but draw attention to herself, so she was bullied while Sadie was just ignored. Fiona's self-esteem plummeted, which led to tragic decisions that caused her death. In the present day, Sadie actually accepts a job offer to teach at Horton. She knows it's not a good idea, but seems unable to resist going back. Only weeks into her second year, the head of the school, Mrs. Thorne, tells Sadie she isn't a good fit. There had been no previous indication of a problem, this is out of the blue. Sadie is suddenly out of a job. It had been a live-in position, so she now has to find a new place to live. Jan invites Sadie to live with her. Besides being her best friend's mother, she has also been a "stand-in" mother to Sadie, whose own mother is distant. Then, a 16 year old girl ,Devon, disappears from the school. Mrs. Thorne calls Sadie and offers her job back to her. Now that the school has become involved in a scandal, Sadie's replacement apparently backed out. So Sadie goes back to the school. Strange things start to happen to Sadie. It appears someone is stalking her. Sadie feels guilty about Fiona's death for some reason, and also alludes to a second secret, involving Stanford, which turns out to be a whopper. Could there be a connection? There are things her mother is withholding from her, and Jan also appears to not be telling Sadie everything. Jan hires a handyman who has a secret of his own. I was curious how all of this was going to fit together. There seemed to be so many characters who were hiding something. I was hoping the ending wasn't going to fall apart, the way suspense novels with a big build-up sometimes do. And it didn't! All of these seemingly disparate story line threads actually did weave together into a coherent and satisfying resolution.
September 6, 2021
I was not sure I was going to like the ending of this book. It seemed there were just too many characters and I couldn't see it all coming together. I was pleasantly surprised at how the author brought it all together. Some thought provoking concepts within the story.
April 25, 2020
Fiona and Sadie had been friends for years. From the poor side of town in Connecticut, they created a bond as close as sisters, perhaps more so. Both intelligent, they were awarded scholarships to the fancy private girl's school in the area that catered to the rich families of the region, but they were to remain outsiders, never to be acknowledged by the girls who most obviously belonged to the school. Fast forward a decade or more and Fiona is nothing more than a memory that is painful to Sadie and despite her best attempts to run away from her life, she is drawn back to the very school that had made her teenage years such a sorrow to take up the role as a teacher. But someone and something has happened in Sadies recent history that makes teaching there a miserable experience and then a student that she shares a loose connection with goes missing and the puzzle of her life begins to unwind.
Marketed as a thriller, it is the exploration of a life not quite owned, of shadowy truth and half-truth blighting each step of the main character Sadie. Never feeling that she has reached her full potential or matched the abilities of her friend Fiona, she has been trying to right the wrongs of the past. Sadie is haunted by past mistakes and grief over the loss of her best friend. This novel touches on infidelity, child and sexual abuse, power and its misuse, and the force of grief never being fully examined and dealt with.
This book lacks the energy to pull the reader in fully, with the characters always remaining ‘interesting’ in the sense that they were simply part of the story, but they never became flesh and blood. The revelations within the story are slow in coming, and there are never enough ‘Easter egg’ clues hidden away within the text for the astute reader to puzzle together, making it a somewhat flat thriller experience. Not truly bad, it just wasn’t as great as hoped for after reading the blurb.
Marketed as a thriller, it is the exploration of a life not quite owned, of shadowy truth and half-truth blighting each step of the main character Sadie. Never feeling that she has reached her full potential or matched the abilities of her friend Fiona, she has been trying to right the wrongs of the past. Sadie is haunted by past mistakes and grief over the loss of her best friend. This novel touches on infidelity, child and sexual abuse, power and its misuse, and the force of grief never being fully examined and dealt with.
This book lacks the energy to pull the reader in fully, with the characters always remaining ‘interesting’ in the sense that they were simply part of the story, but they never became flesh and blood. The revelations within the story are slow in coming, and there are never enough ‘Easter egg’ clues hidden away within the text for the astute reader to puzzle together, making it a somewhat flat thriller experience. Not truly bad, it just wasn’t as great as hoped for after reading the blurb.
May 24, 2020
What a great book, I loved it right to the start Sadie is a great character far from perfect but no matter how damaged she's still fighting on there but then she has no other choice.
Sadie gets a job at the girls school she was a student then years prior different head but Horton still attractived the cream those who had money and don't mind flaunting it which included their precious children who follow their parents examples. After Sadie is asked to leave not really knowing why, she is then invited back after a student has gone missing by the no nonsense head known as Thorpe (Her surname obviously). This thriller will take many twists and turns that you won't see coming but that's what is meant to happen so why chose this thriller? Because it is an exciting and very gripping tale taking you where you won't expect with people that will mislead your thoughts stretch your anxiety and trap your head to the very last page. It is incredible well written specially for a debute thriller so my rating of five stars are very well deserved in my mind.
If you like twisting thrillers dark journeys and dark characters who are who are flawed, damaged and deceptive this is the book for you, if not get it because then you will understand how a little action you take can cause ripples for years to come or do they?
Sadie gets a job at the girls school she was a student then years prior different head but Horton still attractived the cream those who had money and don't mind flaunting it which included their precious children who follow their parents examples. After Sadie is asked to leave not really knowing why, she is then invited back after a student has gone missing by the no nonsense head known as Thorpe (Her surname obviously). This thriller will take many twists and turns that you won't see coming but that's what is meant to happen so why chose this thriller? Because it is an exciting and very gripping tale taking you where you won't expect with people that will mislead your thoughts stretch your anxiety and trap your head to the very last page. It is incredible well written specially for a debute thriller so my rating of five stars are very well deserved in my mind.
If you like twisting thrillers dark journeys and dark characters who are who are flawed, damaged and deceptive this is the book for you, if not get it because then you will understand how a little action you take can cause ripples for years to come or do they?
February 16, 2021
Yikes! Another book that makes me glad I'm a fast reader and only wasted a few hours of my life with it. First, the author was clearly not American but trying to act as if she is (I read her bio, she's Irish but now lives in the US). We have "windshields" not "windscreens", we go "around" and turn "around" not "round", we don't "ring" people we "call"them. On top of all of that, the book was just crammed full of every type of tragedy you can imagine, and basically all at the end. The scene on the boat was absolutely ridiculous. I felt as if I were reading the script to a Lifetime movie. Absolutely dreadful.
May 12, 2020
This story is told from Sadie's point of view. Sadie grief over the loss of her best friend, Fiona and she blame herself for what happened to Fiona in the past.
Btw I have no idea how this story would end and damn I didn't see that coming at all!
This story is filled with a lot of twists and turns but every twists were told at the end. I mean..it keeps coming till the end lol
Thank you Netgalley for The Silent Daughter ARC!
Btw I have no idea how this story would end and damn I didn't see that coming at all!
This story is filled with a lot of twists and turns but every twists were told at the end. I mean..it keeps coming till the end lol
Thank you Netgalley for The Silent Daughter ARC!
May 19, 2020
The Silent daughter by Claire Amarti.
Schoolgirl missing', the ticker reads, and the camera cuts to a girl's face. Blonde hair waterfalling over her shoulders, serious eyes, lips a little parted like she's about to speak. That's when I realize I've been holding my breath, because the gasp when I inhale almost chokes me.
A very good read. Good story and some good characters. 4*.
Schoolgirl missing', the ticker reads, and the camera cuts to a girl's face. Blonde hair waterfalling over her shoulders, serious eyes, lips a little parted like she's about to speak. That's when I realize I've been holding my breath, because the gasp when I inhale almost chokes me.
A very good read. Good story and some good characters. 4*.
Want to read
June 9, 2020🎁 FREE on Amazon today (6/9/2020)! 🎁
May 28, 2020
3.5 Stars
A good psychological thriller. Private girls schools are solid choices for grudges and grievances past and present. Sadie Kelly, a disgraced teacher finds herself back teaching at her old Alma mater when a student goes missing. Parallels from the past complicate events in the present.
Nicely done especially for a debut author. Kept me guessing and entertained.
A good psychological thriller. Private girls schools are solid choices for grudges and grievances past and present. Sadie Kelly, a disgraced teacher finds herself back teaching at her old Alma mater when a student goes missing. Parallels from the past complicate events in the present.
Nicely done especially for a debut author. Kept me guessing and entertained.
December 7, 2020
It was pretty easy reading, but failed to draw me in as a thriller should. I love when I can feel connected to a story's characters, but that wasn't the case in this book. It certainly has twists and turns, but not enough for a 4 star review.
Read
June 14, 2020Very slow paced book.
July 13, 2021
A new author to me and I've marked it 3.5* and rounded up since it's a first novel.....there are too many errors in it for the full complement from this eagle-eyed reader, I'm afraid.
I was pretty annoyed that Sadie kept being called Miss Kelly then it would change to Ms Kelly and then revert back to Miss. Needlessly irritating.
Tupperwares needed capitalising, there were apostrophe mistakes and for some reason, nearing the end, speechmarks were eschewed in favour of apostrophes !! THAT was very peculiar and also very distracting for me. Thirteen was written and not thirteenth, some sentences were ended by hyphens, again needlessly and quite peculiarly, there were words missed from sentences here and there as well. I did find the mention of The News of the World an odd one since we're in America in the book.
I was definitely caught out by the resolution of the story here. I was dead proud that I'd figured it out only to learn......I hadn't !!! Hahaha.....some things never change ! I liked Sadie, though almost every person featured had secrets or told lies ! You just knew the proverbial would eventually hit the fan if they persisted. A little passage about a robin made me cry and then I was laughing when I read how the author used to love reading boarding school stories (in her end-notes) as I did as well....the St Clare's and Mallory Towers stories were terrific and I was always quite jealous reading them as they seemed to have so much more fun at those schools than I was having at the comprehensive !!
I'll definitely try another story by this author as she certainly spins a good and intriguing yarn and just hope it's a little "tidier" is all.
I was pretty annoyed that Sadie kept being called Miss Kelly then it would change to Ms Kelly and then revert back to Miss. Needlessly irritating.
Tupperwares needed capitalising, there were apostrophe mistakes and for some reason, nearing the end, speechmarks were eschewed in favour of apostrophes !! THAT was very peculiar and also very distracting for me. Thirteen was written and not thirteenth, some sentences were ended by hyphens, again needlessly and quite peculiarly, there were words missed from sentences here and there as well. I did find the mention of The News of the World an odd one since we're in America in the book.
I was definitely caught out by the resolution of the story here. I was dead proud that I'd figured it out only to learn......I hadn't !!! Hahaha.....some things never change ! I liked Sadie, though almost every person featured had secrets or told lies ! You just knew the proverbial would eventually hit the fan if they persisted. A little passage about a robin made me cry and then I was laughing when I read how the author used to love reading boarding school stories (in her end-notes) as I did as well....the St Clare's and Mallory Towers stories were terrific and I was always quite jealous reading them as they seemed to have so much more fun at those schools than I was having at the comprehensive !!
I'll definitely try another story by this author as she certainly spins a good and intriguing yarn and just hope it's a little "tidier" is all.
June 10, 2020
My first book by Claire Amarti and I thoroughly enjoyed the well paced, cleverly written domestic thriller. Told from the POV of Sadie, this young woman loses her teaching position and decides to go back to her hometown which she vowed never to return to after her best friend was killed. Well, we knew she couldn’t go back without trouble and the plot slowly builds to a great stunning ending. Definitely a four star solid book.
May 30, 2020
I found this a slowly moving story that is hard to nail down in terms of genre. Playing a main role of the story is a missing girl yet it is not a typical police procedural story; there's no police investigation at all actually and the missing girl does not have the only starring role. Her co-star is a young teacher who has ties to the girl and her family and secrets alluded to. The storytelling is fairly restrained, I wasn't filled with tension and TBH I wasn't holding my breath waiting to find what happened to the missing girl. But I really liked the final few chapters, the way the author wraps everything up and surprised me with a few reveals that really added to the plot and gave the story heart. Clever use of misdirection with certain characters, where who and what and why were not obvious. Well done and a very good debut.
June 11, 2022
This is an interesting story of a person living in the past. Not able to let go of a tragic loss. Guilt so strong she looses herself. The suspense was good but most of it was the last chapter. The rest of the time the author spent having the main character going back and forth from the past to present. Repeating her memories. It is a good story plot and was an easy read.
June 4, 2020
The Silent Daughter A gripping page turner of family secretariat a twist
This is a good story about a young woman that has been raised by her friends mother and her friend dies and then she finds out family secrets
This is a good story about a young woman that has been raised by her friends mother and her friend dies and then she finds out family secrets
April 22, 2021
Twisting tale on coming to acceptance of self and others. Sadly enjoyable and overall clean. Well narrated.
A nicely imparted author’s “thank you” at the end.
A nicely imparted author’s “thank you” at the end.
May 23, 2021
Billed as unputdownable but didn't grip me
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