Thank you so much for the opportunity to read this book. I loved the cover and the blurb intrigued me but I was unable to get into the story. DNF @ 18%.

This novel was slow to start, then drew me in throughout the middle, then reverted back to its original slowness at the end. Which really made the ending feel like a chore to read, more than a neat tidying up of ends, which is what happened.
I expected the black birds falling from the sky to have more relevance, they seemed a novelty to draw the reader in, and then a slight head-nod back to 'Olivia'. This struck me as odd.
All in all, this is a good novel, takes a little bit of focus to finish, but a good read.

“My sister is always talking about the flower that blooms just once at midnight – the kadapul flower, which is only found in Sri Lanka.”

On New Year’s Eve 5,000 blackbirds dropped dead. The same day Olivia McCarthy went missing from a small coastal village in Orkney. Now her younger sister, Alex, is left to pick up the pieces. But does she really want to know what happened?


This book was beautifully written. It had a flow that was so easy to engage and from the start I was anticipating a great little thriller. That, however, was about everything this book gave me.

Blackbird has a plot that was so glaringly obvious, so early into the book, that I quickly lost interest. I have read so many crime/mystery/thriller books in my lifetime that I KNOW what I want from them:

+drama
+red herrings
+twists and turns
+the occasional explosion
+bonus points for the inclusion of a cult

This book sorely lacked in EVERYTHING though. From the young sister trying to seek answers, to the old male detective who has serious transgressions in his past but that doesn’t stop him from being the savior of the story.

It has all been done before.

The only original thing I took away from this book was the mysterious death of 5000 blackbirds at the beginning of the story. But it turns out this had nothing to do with the story line AT ALL. Why all the birds died on New Year’s Eve at once? I have no idea.

While I didn’t connect too much with the characters, I am summing this up to the fact that, by a few chapters in, I was just slugging through to get the end that I was already expecting.

I will say again that the book is wonderfully written, and this did extend to the characters as well. All the characters came across very desolate, floating around on their own, putting pieces together. This is kinda to be expected, however, as the MC and many of the side characters are dealing with the loss of a loved one.

All in all – I enjoyed Gomes writing and therefore I may pick up another of their books in the future. However, this story in particular gave me nothing that I haven’t already experienced before in a crime mystery novel.

*thank you to NetGalley and Harlequin (Australia), TEEN / MIRA for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review*

1.5 stars.
I LOVE this cover! I really liked the first chapter of this, but that was pretty much all. Its about the lives of a family after the daughter/sister is found dead. It just, I donno. I just found it a bit boring. It didnt capture my attention. I dont really have anything else to say about it. It just wasnt for me.