Originally I said that I would not provide feedback on this title but I went back and read it at a later time to give it another try. I am so glad that I did! Now the beginning is slow and I think that is what held me back but once I pushed through to the 30% mark I felt much more immersed in the characters and the story. The characters for me where the main drive of the book. You could identify with them all turns. You liked them, you didn't like them, you were upset and annoyed at them, you get the picture. Overall the book was very good and the plot twist at the end was truly fantastic!

I highly recommend this one.

Thanks so much to the publisher and to NetGalley for giving me access to this book. This mystery is well written and keeps the reader's focus. I believe most mystery readers will enjoy this book. I will recommend it to my patrons.

Good but predictable storyline. An easy read, although the topics are heavy. A nice mystery. I didn’t like most of the characters and felt they fell pretty flat. That might be because there were so many characters that didn’t have any real role and so many little side story lines to keep in mind that it got confusing.

While this book started out slow for me and white too many characters to keep straight the mysteries began to get more entangled and I couldn't figure out the major plot twists. Both sad and somewhat satisfying this turned into a great book. The last half sped by. I will always look for books by Fiona Barton.

I enjoyed peeling back the clues of this mystery story. Unknown human remains are found, and a reporter conducts research to determine who it is. By doing so, she learns of an incident that occurred decades earlier. This was a great, quick story that I really enjoyed.

I wanted to give Fiona Barton's writing a second chance after being underwhelmed by The Widow; but we just don't get along. Not for me.

Note: clearing old books from before 2019

Did not have time to read this book - still on my TBR. Thank you for the opportunity and my apologies for not getting to it.

This novel is filled with twists and turns; some are fairly predictable, but others are quite surprising. The cast of characters and their various timelines are slightly difficult to keep straight, so some readers may be able to piece together what is going on sooner than others. Once a flow is established, the tale is fascinating, and it's a race to discover who is telling the truth and who is hiding deep secrets. For fans of psychological suspense, this book is a fantastic choice.
The skeleton of a newborn baby is unearthed when workers are digging up the foundation of a building in London. Reporter Kate Waters begins to investigate, especially when she finds out it might have been buried for decades. Many years ago, Angela's newborn baby disappeared from the maternity ward of a hospital and has never been found. Kate begins to wonder if this could be Angela's child, and reaches out to the police and to Angela. As a child, Emma lived in the area where the remains were found and is fascinated by the story for many reasons. As the lives of the three women intersect, can Kate and the police piece together what happened to this child so many years before?

The Child, by Fiona Barton
The Child is a fast-paced mystery that begins with the discovery of a tiny newborn skeleton at a building demolition site. Kate Waters, an investigative journalist, begins to interview those who had lived in the home during the past several decades. The Child is told in the alternate voices of four women, Angela, whose baby was kidnapped from the maternity hospital almost 40 years earlier, Emma, traumatized by the secret she has kept for twenty years, Jude, Emma’s self-involved mother, and Kate, who ultimately solves the mystery of the baby’s identity. Unputdownable!

I received an Advanced Readers Copy of this book through NetGalley and Berkeley Publishing. This is a Kate Waters book #2, I did not read the first book but it stands alone just fine. This story is told from multiple points of view in short chapters, the mystery will keep you turning pages as the main character Kate, a journalist tries to uncover the mystery behind a skeleton of a baby found in a house. It is a suspenseful psychological thriller with a very unexpected ending.

I love love LOVED this book! I never saw that ending coming! There were SOOOO many twists and turns that kept me on the edge of my seat. I couldn’t put it down, I had to know what was happening next! I like books where I haven’t figured out the ending before I get there, this was that book. I need more from Barton.

The main characters of The Child are all intriguing. There is Kate the reporter following up on a story of a baby’s remains found buried during a construction dig. Angela is the mother of a baby that was kidnapped from the hospital just hours after her birth and has never had closure. Emma is a surprise POV; she lived at the location that the baby remains were found. I found it interesting how different their lives were yet together the stories all came together perfectly.

There were secrets, intrigue, and surprises that I never saw coming. The mystery was not hard to solve but with each different twist and turn I learned more about the various characters. I was invested in Kate getting her story, Angela getting her closure, and Emma coming to terms with her teenage years. There is so much more to this story than meets the eyes.

The ending was the surprise. The Child is certainly a psychological thriller that kept me on my toes. I could not put the book down.

Thank you to NetGalley and Berkley for this free readers edition. In exchange, I am providing an honest review.

Barton introduced Kate Waters, a journalist, to the reader in The Widow. Kate Waters makes a good character to build a series around. There's lots of character development Barton can do with her and as a journalist, there is always some sort of interesting story she can be looking into.

A child, a newborn child, has been discovered buried. From what is immediately evident the child didn't live or had no chance to live past being birthed and it looks like this child was born a very long time ago. So many questions come with this discovery; who is the child, was it murdered or born dead, who are the parents of the child, does anyone else know about this? With very little to go on the local police open an investigation.

Kate Waters is looking for a good story. She's tired of doing puff pieces and wants something to grab her, and the readers, attention. Plus, the rumors around the newsroom hint at possible layoffs and she needs this job. What would she do at home all day anyway? It's been a couple of years since her story about Jean Taylor and she needs another boost to her byline like that. When her eye catches a few sentences about a baby being found buried she decides to try and turn it into something.

Kate, with an apprentice in tow, begins to sift through the details and search out the leads. Slow and steady wins the race and all. Eventually, pieces of this puzzle begin to emerge but they are detailing a picture quite different than what anyone, including Kate, thought it would be.

Fiona Barton writes a solid story. In her first title, I felt like the story dragged in parts but this title had a good pace to it. She's clearly working on developing Kate Waters with each title and it all fits - it doesn't seem too slow or too rushed. I'm curious to read the next title in the series as it continues with a personal storyline for Kate introduced in this book.

This was an interesting story, and the chapters are told from different characters perspectives. I liked it, but there were a lot of characters to keep track of. The story bounced back and forth between the present and two different time periods in the past. I was surprised by the ending, which is always the sign of a good book for me. I like the author's writing style and will read more books by her.

I received a complimentary copy of this ebook from Berkley through NetGalley. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.

Review on Goodreads and Amazon

4 Star review

This is the second Kate Waters mystery I have read and find them to be very enjoyable. I will say this one kept me guessing a bit more as to the full layout of the story than the first in series did. I thoroughly enjoyed the character development. I will admit though to not being thrilled with the MULTI POV Ms. Barton's books have, especially when another character is thrown in. This can result in 5 different POVs. I simply find it distracting and irritating. Thus, the 4 star review.

Reviewed for publisher via Netgalley.

When the skeleton of a newborn is discovered at a building site in a rapidly-gentrifying part of London, Angela is convinced that it belongs to her baby Alice, stolen from her hospital cot 40 years earlier. But Emma, a ghostwriter who works from home and who has definite mental health issues, is just as convinced that the baby has something to do with her own tormented adolescence in the 80s. Kate Waters, a reporter who’s known for really getting to know the people she’s interviewing, gets to know both Emma and Angela.

Emma’s troubled past haunts her. She hides it from her husband, a professor, as much as she can. Many of her troubles seem to stem from her adolescence and from her rocky relationship with her mother, Jude. Jude and her then-boyfriend actually kicked Emma out of the house at one point, and Emma struggles as her mother continues to want this man to come back into their lives.

Angela’s husband and other children wish she could move on from the loss of her baby, but she can’t, and has never been able to. The policeman in charge of the investigation suspected Angela and her husband were possibly involved, but of course were never able to prove anything. Now the same policeman revisits the case.

Meanwhile, Kate is dealing with a changing newsroom, as everything’s gone digital now and there’s less call for old-fashioned investigative journalism. Undeterred, she tracks down the old inhabitants of the neighborhood, getting to know the boy who made the discovery of the tiny skeleton, the owner of the local pub and his wife, and the older woman who still lives in her original house and who has long memories. She looks at old photo albums, and becomes a friend to the women involved. And bit by bit, she comes to the truth. But can she reveal it? She’s treading a fine line between retaining the trust of the police and the trust of the women involved.

The Child is an excellent book, one I’ve already read twice and plan to revisit in the years to come. Fiona Barton’s pacing is masterful, and I know I should have figured out the major plot twist earlier but I didn’t, and it rocked me. I really cared about the characters, and excitedly turned each page in anticipation of what would follow as the mystery was revealed, bit by bit. Can’t wait to read more from this author!

I really enjoyed The Widow last year, so I was excited to read the author’s follow-up The Child. I mistakenly thought this was a sequel, but although the books share a common character, it is definitely a standalone with a completely different plot. Like The Widow, the book is very slow building with a character-driven narrative. A lot of different stories are weaving through The Child and it takes some time for the connections to be revealed. I think the book could’ve been thinned out a little since some of the sub-plots only came across as filler and didn’t lend much substance to the novel. The Child was a solid 3 stars for me, but the ending was very well done and elevated it to 3 ½ stars.

Review posted on Amazon and Goodreads

Fiona Barton always delivers with wonderful plot twists. I am eagerly awaiting her next book The Suspect in January 2019.

I loved The Widow by Ms. Barton and was equally as impressed with this one. The way she weaves her stories together is highly enjoyable for lovers of psychological thrillers.

If you've read a Fiona Barton book, you're familiar with the brilliant twists and turns...The Child makes no exception. Turning page after page engrossed in the story, I felt like I was on the investigation team and at any moment I'd be asked my opinion on what happened. Of course, I would have been wrong, LOL.

I love the way this book unfolds because we get SO much perspective. We have several stories to follow and all along find a way to connect them, which at first always seems impossible. I was on the edge of my seat as I cruised through this suspenseful novel, in the end I was as shocked as I hoped to be.

If you like a good psychologically suspenseful novel, this is the way to go.

-side note- I do suggest reading The Widow first, though not required.