I have read and enjoyed this author’s previous books and this one certainly did not disappoint.

After a fairly slow start, it then drew me in at speed! It was an intriguing story with complicated characters.

I highly recommend.

If you want a book which draws you in with believable characters with whom you can feel at least a little sympathy, and a well thought out plot that moves along at a pace even slightly faster than a snail going backwards, you'll not find it here.

Our heroine, Felicity, returns to her home town after the disappearance of a young girl. Having fled the town some sixteen years earlier following the disappearance of a friend, she feels an obligation to go back. No, I'm not sure either, but there we are, this is the premise of this painfuly slow, rather dull, book. I couldn't connect with any of the characters, the dialogue is, at times, cheesier than a ripe camembert,, and it just didn't hold my interest at all.

Heatwave? Why? What's the relevance? This is possibly the only mystery about this book. It's certainly not the “tense, gripping, shocking” book described by some anonymous fan, or “absorbing and wonderfully twisted” as described by another. I can only think they read a different book, because this one had me falling asleep.

The book starts in an unusual way. There is a kidnap in Sidmouth, Devon. Then it switches to the Lake District to a family who seem to be quite ordinary and well balanced. Suddenly, the mother, Felicity, decides to go to Sidmouth on the spur of the moment. Quite out of character apparently.

We find out that Felicity used to live in Sidmouth and she left when she was 16. From the writing, the reader gets the feeling that Felicity has run away from something dreadful that happened there all those years ago. Felicity hates being back.

The story jumps from the present when Felicity is the narrator to the past, when Jasmine becomes the narrator, Felicity’s best friend. The two storylines come together nicely in the book, in a lovely dramatic fashion.

The only bit I didn’t really like was not understanding why Felicity ran down to Sidmouth when she heard about the disappearance of the young girl. Even though you knew you would find out, it wasn’t written well in my opinion. In order to enjoy the book I just had to forget my feelings and read what was in front of me.

As Jasmine grew up, a lot of bad things happened around her. The links between the characters are unveiled well as is the revealing of secrets. There are plenty of twists, turns and surprises to be revealed. It’s a good read, although I didn’t feel the book related to the title or the beach on its front cover.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Avon books for the opportunity to read.

This review will go live on 29 May. I will copy it to Goodreads and Amazon afterwards:
Hi and welcome to my review of The Heatwave!

I know there’s a bit of a contradictio in terminis going on on my little blog, ‘cause I keep telling everyone who will listen that I’m on a NetGalley ban, yet I keep posting NetGally ARC reviews. I have SUCH a good reason though: books from authors I love keep popping up and I cannot walk away from that, I am not made of steel!

So today I have another review of a book by one of my auto-buy authors, namely Katerina Diamond. Back in 2016 I read Ms Diamond’s debut novel The Teacher and I knew I had a winner on my hands. I haven’t looked back since, Imogen Grey and Adrian Miles – the protagonists of her police procedural series – are two of my favourite people and every time a new Katerina Diamond novel comes out, I’m there to snap it up! Book by book, I have witnessed how much both the author and her characters have grown, and each new book is an absolute treat.

The Heatwave is not a new instalment of that series I love so much, it is Ms Diamond’s first standalone novel and I was fully prepared to miss Miley and Imogen, but before long I was entirely caught up in The Heatwave and there was no time nor space to miss anything or anyone.

The Heatwave goes back and forth between now and then. The past storyline is told from the POV of Jasmine, a teenage girl with a best friend and a bit of a teenage crush, who is about to grow up a whole faster than she bargained for. During a very hot summer, one of Jasmine’s classmates goes missing, forever casting a shadow on their picture-perfect little seaside town. The present storyline is told from the POV of Felicity, who grew up in said town, and fled it. But now, sixteen years later, she has to go back, because another girl has gone missing and she might be the only one who can help. Going back, however, means facing up to what happened sixteen years ago…

The Heatwave starts out as a bit of a slow-burner, building up the tension. One thing is crystal clear from the start: there’s a plethora of juicy secrets to unravel! Both storylines are absolutely shrouded in mystery, not just the missing girls, if anything they melt a little into the background, but also Jasmine and her suspicions and Felicity who is obviously hiding something, or multiple things even, and I couldn’t help but wonder just how reliable a narrator she really is.

I had an inkling about one secret. At times I felt it was blatantly obvious, other times Ms Diamond deftly made me question not only my gut feeling but everything else with it. She made me wait for it, that’s for sure, but in the end I was proven right and it was all I could do not to punch the air and scream HA I KNEW IT from the top of my lungs. Funny how sometimes seeing a reveal coming is a total kill-joy and other times it makes you feel triumphant and on top of the world, only adding to your enjoyment. Having said this, there were many other reveals I had not seen coming AT ALL, one rendering me positively speechless (translation: I was totally blubbing like a goldfish again 😂).

The Heatwave is the perfect summer thriller to read by the pool this summer, or on a pebbly beach, or by the pond like I did, or if this lockdown persists, in your bathtub, wherever you read it is absolutely fine ‘cause odds are you’ll end up forgetting all about your surroundings anyway! Recommended!

Felicity is living a seemingly happy life in the Lake District with her husband and two kids but when she learns about the disappearance of a young girl in her hometown she decides to leave everything inmediately and go there as she suspects that disappearance may be related to another missing girl 16 years ago.

Told in dual lines, we follow Felicity in the present time as she tries to uncover what happened to the missing girl and Jasmine, her best friend, in the past line, when we learn baout everything that happened when the girls were teenagers.

From the beginning it's made clear that Felicity has many demons and is hiding lots of things. While both lines held my attention I think the past one dragged along a bit around the middle part. It's not till the last 20% that everything starts to unravel and then we got twist after twist after twist (some of them I guessed, some I didn't). One of the problems I found was that the resolution, although answered all the questions, felt little credible (that confession conversation sounded anything but heartfelt and come one, I'm sure the author could find a better motivation than a difficult childhood!).

Anyway, in spite of all this, it was a fast and entertaining read so I will check some of the author's previous work.

3,5 stars

Thanks to Netgalley and Avon Books UK for providing an eARC in exchange for an honest review.

I have read other books by Katerina Diamond and loved them so I was really excited to have the chance to read “Heatwave”. This book did not disappoint! So full of twists and turns you don’t want to put it down.

After a very slow start, I got to a point in the book where I could not put this down. This was told in 2 POVs - then and now. Several twists at the end left me shaking my head! No spoilers here. Lol The only reason I am giving this 3 stars and not 4 is because of the very slow start. Took me awhile to get into it! Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for this early release in exchange for my honest review.

First, a thank you to @netgalley and Avon Books UK this ARC!

Well this book hit me like a heatwave! Totally unexpected, nail-biting, gripping, twisted, crazy, keep you guessing who dun it kind of story! I devoured this book in less than a day and a half and loved how I kept wanting more! The story goes back and forth between then and now which I thought was interesting and kept you paying attention as you didn’t want to miss what happens. One day, Felicity, gets up and leaves her family to head back to her home town when she hears about another missing girl 16 years after the first one - when she left the town to start a new life. She is on a mission to figure out if the two killings are related and it is then that she finds out what really happened or didn’t happen. I highly recommend this bad boy if you’re looking for a crime-filled, psychological thriller! Get this book on pre-order ASAP if you are!!

In Sidmouth, Devon, best friends Felicity and Jasmine are typical teens doing what typical teens do – underage drinking, smoking, boys... However, something happened that fateful summer that changed their lives forever. Fast forward 15+ years and Felicity now lives with her husband and two children in the Lake District. Despite moving to the other side of the country, she has not managed to outrun the shadows of her past. When a girl goes missing, Felicity finds the memories of that summer flooding back and she heads back to her hometown to hopefully banish those demons once and for all.

The tale is a dual narrative, see-sawing between past and present. The reader is gradually led to understand what happened all of those years previously and how those events are connected, if indeed they are, to the recent disappearance.

Written in an engaging style, there is an overriding air of menace to the story and the hot, muggy weather described by the narrators adds a sense of heaviness and claustrophobia. I found myself quickly drawn into the tale.

This is a book full of twists and turns, with a shock or a surprise around every corner. Whilst some elements may have seem somewhat farfetched, it certainly makes for a great story! The book is intense, dark and very compelling.

The Heatwave is another great book from Katerina Diamond and I fully expect it to be one of 2020’s top summer reads.

Big thanks to Avon and Netgalley for providing me with an advanced review copy of this book.

Two friends who's youth was intertwined. What happened when they were teenagers will shock you. What happens when one returns to her hometown 16 years later will shock you even further. Gripping.

I loved this book. Katerina Diamond never fails to deliver with her excellent psychological thrillers and this was no exception. I would whole heartedly recommend this book, you definitely won't be disappointed.

I finished reading The Heatwave yesterday, and it was everything I wanted in a novel: intense, fast-paced, had me guessing constantly and also was easy to read - I don’t have a huge amount of time with a toddler on the go and so a book that I don’t need to delve into to find meaning within paragraphs is perfect.

The story is told from a 2-person and dual-timeline narrative: Felicity is an adult in the present who returns home to help solve the mystery of missing girl Mandy Green, and Jasmine is a teenager in the past dealing with dark secrets surrounding a previously missing girl.

The plot kept me absolutely hooked, and I only just guessed the twist a few lines before it was revealed - in fact I shouted it to my son, who really didn’t care as he was eating blocks at the time - it was such a good twist!

I can’t wait for Diamond’s next work!

Thank you netgalley for allowing me an ARC of this in exchange for an honest review.

Thank you NetGalley and Avon for a copy of The Heatwave by Katerina Diamond. This is a dark, compelling thriller with a surprising twist at the end that you do not see coming.
Felicity lives with her husband Chris in the Lake district with there two kids. She has a happy marriage, but she is keeping some dark secrets from her past. She sees a news report about a missing girl Mandy Green. This is not unusual but, the girl has gone missing from her childhood town of Sidmouth in Devon. As soon as she sees she decides to pack her bags and go to Sidmouth to find the girl as she reckons it is her fault that she has gone missing.
The story goes back and forth in time to tell the story of when Felicity was 16 then named Jasmine and the events that leads up to the fatal day.
This is a slow burner of the story that you do not get the full picture until the last third of the story. Of Jasmine (now Felicity) and her life with her parents and the lodger Tim that from the instance she sees him, something just is not right. I found this story is tense and creepy. I really enjoyed this as it just the right kind of book to take my mind of the current situation we are in. 4 stars from me.

I hadn’t previously read a book by this author, Katerina Diamond, but thought this one would be a good introduction.
The Heatwave is told I through dual narrators, many years apart. In both timelines, a young girl mysteriously vanishes. What links the two girls and the narrators?
I couldn’t put this book down and would recommend it. I’ll will now be looking for more by this author.

A great read that kept me gripped . I got totally absorbed in this and did not see the end coming. I had not read any of Katerina Diamonds work before but I will now!

Thanks Net Galley for allowing me to read this in exchange for an honest opinion!

Well that was unexpected and a very good read. Twists and turns and a very well written plot. You know it's a good book when you can't warm to all of the characters.

Since The Teacher came out I have been an avid fan of Ms Diamond's books. This is a stand alone book that I got as an ARC from NetGalley.
My rating is 3, 5 stars but I gave 4 as unable to split stars and 3 seemed too low
The book starts off really well with the prologue and then is good but not top notch. The story flips between the past-Jasmine story and the present- Felicity story. This works well and the plot is well written and crafted. There are occasional Americanisms which jar slightly and the usual spelling, layout errors that will doubtless be tidied up before publication.
I did have a problem with the characters-well drawn and fleshed out they were all loathsome. I felt I should have been able to empathise with Felicity more but somehow I just couldn't. I also had a problem with "believability". Quite a few things didn't ring true. I also felt the last few pages were a bit rushed

Another great read by this fabulous author, a great story and one that you will want to finish to the end. Twisting, gripping storyline as we have come to expect. However, this was not as much a page turner as the previous books by this author. If this is your first read b Katerina Diamond then please read some of the others as this one was not the best in my opinion. Won't stop me looking out for her books though!

Wow, don't really know how to describe this book. It starts of innocently with a woman who wants to, needs to return to her hometown after another young girl disappears from there, like one did many years ago. As soon as she returns to the town things start happening that the reader, every time you flick a page over, can't keep up with! There is twists and turns galore, and I did not see the final twist coming, well done! Recommended.
TB

This truly is the most riveting book you will read this summer, I began reading, then did not put it down until I finished. This is so intricate, complex, exciting and totally unguessable, for me anyway, that I felt as if I could not risk stopping, that I was living the story. I am very familiar with Sidmouth and that too made the whole event come to life even more, I knew where she was, where she sat, where the events were happening, at times I felt that I was having a too real dream! Great storytelling, great writing, I must read more from this author...but only when I have time to read from start to finish. Thank you Netgalley for the ARC and the author, Katerina, for being so good.