Felicity and Jasmine are teen friends wading through life, boys and alcohol. Their lives are very different but best friends there for each other. Years later a teenage girl has gone missing and Felicity is the only one who can save her so she returns to her seaside home so she can lay the ghosts of her past to rest.
This was the first book I have read by Katerina and it won’t be my last. She builds a tense story which leads to a very exciting end.
Thank you to netgalley and the publishers for this arc in exchange for my honest review.

Felicity is shocked when she sees a report on television that a young girl has gone missing from the town where she grew up. She had run away from home sixteen years ago while a search was ongoing for another missing girl.
Felicity feels the need to go home to help look for the missing teenager and find out exactly what happed to the other girl all those years ago.
A thriller that kept me on the edge of my seat with lots of twists and turns.
Thank you to NetGalley and Avon Books UK for my e-copy in exchange for an honest review.

The book starts in a very unsettling way with the kidnap in Sidmouth, Devon of Mandy Green and then switches location to the Lake District where Felicity Musgrave lives with her husband Chris and two children. Felicity knots with tension on hearing about Mandy but why? Even more puzzling is that she leaves the family home to rush down to Sidmouth where it transpires she grew up. She tells Chris that the Mandy case is almost identical to another missing girl case in the Devon town when she was 16. It soon becomes apparent that Felicity has been running from many demons, that there are lies in her background which is intriguing as it seems she’s on a collision course with events in her past. The story is told in the present by Felicity and in the past by Jasmine Burgess who was Felicity’s best friend. Jasmine’s parents are Frank and Lisa who seem very kind as they spend their summer holidays in various world locations doing charity work. Their kindness is also demonstrated by their offer of the family guest house to Tim who needs their help. Tim makes Jasmine feel very uneasy, uncomfortable, if not fearful. Why does he unsettle her so much? These two storylines from the past and present connect very dramatically.

The story is easy to read, you feel Felicity’s tension but it’s hard for a long time to understand why she feels she’s the one that can solve the missing girl cases. Jasmine’s feelings about Tim come across well although as the book progresses I think this point becomes a bit laboured. The links between the characters unravel well as do the revealing of secrets and you come to appreciate the guilt and baggage being carried. As Jasmine grows up a number of menacing, sinister and creepy events occur around her and this comes across well and I found myself immersed in her story. There are plenty of twists, turns and revelations as well as the odd jawdropper surprise that I did not see coming! However, this is a trademark of the author.

Although I really did enjoy the book there is some dialogue which doesn’t feel very realistic p, for example between Jasmine and her father. The plot is far fetched which is fine, it’s fiction after all but there are some ‘disappearances’ that are not mentioned or accounted for in the timeframe in which they occur which seems odd! That aside, it’s a good read and one which the many fans of Katerina Diamond will lap up.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Avon Books UK for the Arc.

The Heatwave is Katerina Diamond's first standalone thriller and as one who has read ,and enjoyed, her entire Imogen Grey series I was keen to find out how she''d fare with new characters and a clean slate. Very well is the answer and this is her best book to date. Ms Diamond's first book was a very good effort and subsequent books just got better and better, The Heatwave puts her right up with the likes of Erin Kelly, Belinda Bauer and Sharon Bolton with it's believable characters , twists and an intriguing page-turner of a plot.

Felicity is a woman with a history, one that her husband is totally unaware of. On seeing a TV news report about a missing girl in the small Devon coastal town of Sidmouth her mind goes back to her own teenaged years and a similar event that she was involved in. Much to her husband's dismay , Felicity decides that only she can find and save the missing girl and needs to return to Sidmouth immediately to do so..

The story has 2 timelines, the present as Felicity goes around her old haunts and in search of information and 16 years earlier when the first disappearance occurred and a 16 year-old Felicity and best friend Jasmine competed for the attentions of the enigmatic Tim who Jasmine's parents let live in their Summerhouse in return for work. Having been gone for so long Felicity finds that she has been all but forgotten by the few former schoolmates she comes across and pumps for information. While initially the disappearance appears unconnected to the girl's lives events spiral out of control and Felicity leaves town very quickly, making a new life for herself until the fateful news broadcast.

The Heatwave is an involving read, I read it in one sitting stopping only to eat. the story is clever and the characters believable. There are a few good twists, the big one I worked out quite a long way before the reveal but then I do read a lot of thrillers and the clues are there if you're paying attention. This is the best book by an author that I first encountered when reading her "great for a new author" first book, "The Teacher" and have seen go from strength to strength until this one which is as good as any thriller by the "big names". Highly recommended.

Thanks to Katerina Diamond, Avon Books and Netgalley for the ARC in return for an honest review.

A nice seaside town - check, the sun hot in the sky - check - and all the twisty feels - check and check some more!
When Felicity hears that a girl has gone missing in her childhood hometown, she heads back as she feels compelled to find out what happened and how it could be linked to what happened when she was young. Before she she fled. What on earth is she hiding and what did happen then and what is happening now?

Nicely plotted and written, this is a back then and now book with the thread of intrigue weaving its way through the novel. It gets tighter and tighter, twistier and twistier. I was intrigued to find out who, why and what. Oh and when and how of course.

Lots of questions it's fun to get answers to. Small seaside setting really adds to the homefeel, a small town stuck in time with the heat and pressure of the boiling sun really making their mark.

Another fantastic book from Katerina Diamond. When Felicity hears that a girl has gone missing in her childhood hometown, she immediately heads back as she feels it is linked to what happened when she was a teenager, before she fled. The story changes between the present and the past where we start to find out what exactly happened all those years ago. Is what is happening now connected to what happened back then? What we find out is tense, gripping, shocking, and full of fantastic twists and turns! I actually felt a tingle in my spine as the ending was revealed as it was just so clever and shocking. Absolutely loved this book and can't recommend it enough.

It’s been sixteen years since Felicity was home, She left after a local girl disappeared, but now she’s back and another girl has gone missing. Felicity has no choice but to face what really happened almost 20 years ago. This is an intense psychological thriller with the heat of summer ratcheting up the tension

I opened this book this afternoon and was hooked straight away, I didn’t put it down again until I finished it! Brilliant story, kept me guessing until its shocking ending; that I definitely had not seen coming at all. Definitely worth reading!,