Absolutely fantastic!!! I am not normally a fan of this style of novel, but after reading it, can truly think of no other way it could have been told-- fantastic characters, amazing story, and I didn't want to put it down!

Loved it even more than The Widow!

I would like to thank NetGalley, Berkley Books, and Fiona Barton for the advanced digital copy in exchange for an honest review. This is Barton's second thrilling novel which begins with the discovery of infant skeletal remains. Spanning over decades and crossing over the present and the past, this tale steadily unfolds between Angela, an aging mother who believes the remains are those of her missing daughter, Kate, the reporter uncovering the story, and Emma, a woman who appears to be obsessed with the case. These woman's lives entwine throughout the pages, filled with plot twists and turns and ending with a stellar conclusion. After a slow start, this book quickly becomes very difficult to put down.

I adored her first novel, _The Widow_. In contrast, this is a solid but not breathtaking novel.

A fine British mystery, Fiona Barton’s The Child is deftly plotted with strongly drawn female characters that excel in keeping their many secrets close at hand. The narrative is driven by a sad discovery reported in the daily newspaper, the remains of a baby’s skeleton are found at a building site in Woolwich, a town in south east London. The identity of the child and how she came to be at the building site are reflected upon by three women whose lives all intertwine by the book’s neat end. Kate Waters, a determined Post reporter investigating the mystery of the “Building Site Baby,” is compelled to keep digging for facts and evidence despite her editor’s early reluctance to believe the story is newsworthy. Angela Irving is the mother of “The Irving Baby” that was snatched while she was in the hospital forty years before (Angela was showering for just a few minutes while the baby was sleeping and came back to an empty room). Of course when Angela reads of the baby’s discovery at the building site, she wonders even after all these years, if the remains could be her lost child. Emma Simmonds, a young married ghostwriter, also sees the short newspaper notice about the baby, triggering memories and speculation about the child’s origins. Emma’s once estranged mother Jude, a retired lawyer, is also is affected by the news article. With an assist from a young intern whom she initially resents and sympathetic local law enforcement personnel, Kate’s dogged pursuit of the truth leads to the three women. Book chapters, narrated in first person by the major characters, afford shifting points of view helping to build suspense. This book is an intelligent who-done-it that stands alone and/or has the potential for launching an intriguing series based on Kate’s investigative reporting.
Disclosure: I received a free digital ARC from NetGalley in return for a fair honest review of the book.

Another win for Fiona Barton, this time even better than The Widow. Lots of twists and turns and I loved the development of Emma through the book....I'll be recommending this one to everyone!

See my GoodReads review here https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1902848517

The Child by Fiona Barton
4 Stars
I would like to thank NetGalley for giving me early access to this book!

Summary

In a once sketchy area of London, a construction crew unearths a tiny human skeleton while demolishing a row of old homes. The child couldn’t have been older than a newborn infant when it died. The initial article in the paper is small, and it seems pretty clear that the police aren’t make it a priority. But as Kate Waters, a local reporter and superstar from the widow case a few years back, starts to get involved, more alarming questions begin to arise.

Who was this baby?

Who lived in this home when the baby was buried?

Why was it all kept a secret?

Could this baby be Alice Irving? The baby who was taken from her hospital crib decades ago?

As Kate tracks down old inhabitants of the area and starts to uncover the truth, frightening images of rape and drug addicts begin to surface. New evidence pours in and new questions are being asked. Old inhabitants and neighbors who didn’t seem important before are now key witnesses to her investigation. And while Kate uncovers the truth, she must keep in contact with the now elderly mother of Alice Irving, Angela, who is still in pieces from her baby’s abduction decades earlier.

Told from the perspectives of Kate, Angela, and Emma, a young woman who appears to be obsessed with the case in the beginning, The Child tells a heartbreaking and scary story of the things we hide and the frightening lengths we go to for love.

Review

I was ready to give this one 3 stars. It took me way too long to get into it in the beginning because everything felt so disconnected. There were these 3 perspectives that you had no clue how to relate to one another, and there wasn’t a whole lot revealed until about halfway through the book.

As with many books I read, I think I was just being impatient. Obviously these 3 women’s stories were disconnected in the beginning! We knew nothing about them until their backgrounds were very slowly revealed. I did figure out what was going on a bit before the characters did, but that didn’t make it any less enjoyable. It was still thrilling and scary to watch it all unfold in front of Kate, the reporter’s eyes.

If you haven’t read Fiona Barton’s other book, The Widow, then you should know that Kate Waters is a repeat character from that book. There were no other connections between the 2 books though.

Things I LOVED

Kate’s style of reporting. While she’s still a reporter who’s ultimately after the great story, she seems to genuinely care about the people she’s writing about. She was very careful with Angela when discussing baby Alice, and she frequently drove Emma home or checked in on her at random times.

The ending. It would be wrong to say that everything worked out because it didn’t, but there were some very satisfying parts to the ending. It wasn’t really a happy ending, but it seemed like a step in the right direction, if that makes sense.

Things I Didn’t Love

The slow pace. I totally understand that things need to be revealed slowly in these types of books. But I feel like there should have been more in the beginning. Instead of feeling intrigued and excited to uncover the truth, I found myself frustrated and irritated that I was almost halfway through and STILL had no clue what was really going on or who these people were.

Reporters in general. While Kate had style and poise in her work, she still took a small level of pleasure in getting the “news” before other reporters would have. I guess I’ll never understand how one person can find joy in another’s suffering.

A Minor Comparison

Finally, since Fiona Barton only has 1 other book, I’m going to compare the 2 very briefly.
If you haven’t already read The Widow, I highly recommend that you do! It was a great book, and I will admit that I thought it was better than this one. But I think that there’s a very important reason why.

In The Widow, we were dealing with an abducted child. I won’t say whether or not the child was found alive, but the possibility was there throughout the entire book. The urgency of the situation made everything move so much faster, and it felt like a race to the end. The Child was a lot different because even though the ending was important to get to so that we could uncover the truth, we were still dealing with a skeleton. There wasn’t any alarm in the situation. The crimes were decades old, and the people involved were elderly or middle-aged. It just made for a less urgent, slower moving story.

All in all though, this was a great book, and I would definitely recommend it!

I really enjoyed Fiona Barton's first book The Widow and I must say I loved The Child even more! Barton caught my attention last year with her debut of The Widow so when I saw she had a new book coming out I was very excited and she did not disappoint! An enthralling read that you just don't want to put down I finished it in less than 2 days. Very fast paced, great storyline, and I'm just a sucker for a really good plot twist which Barton gives you! I will definitely be recommending this one as soon as it comes out to all my thriller fans that come to my store!

When a derelict house in London is pulled down, the remains of an infant are found in the wreckage. Investigative reporter Kate Waters is determined to give the lost child a name and soon uncovers the link between an infant stolen from a local hospital, a child who was never recovered. Who is the baby and why was it left behind all those years before? Barton proves herself a master of suspense