I have been reading a lot of romance and fantasy lately and felt like a change of direction so I opened my Kindle and began to scroll until I came across a title by Miranda Rijks. I have enjoyed a few of her psychological thrillers in the past and figured this one would be no different. As I open the book we are presented with the murder in the first chapter as we meet a young girl stabbed on the rocks. The book then jumps to the next chapter where the young girl's parents get a knock on their door. Abi has been found stabbed in South Africa and alone, this doesn't make sense to Grace as her daughter was supposed to be staying with friends Becky and Ethan. Grace is about to have her eyes wide open and learn that her daughter has a secret life that she never imagined. Readers will learn that Abi through her diary entries became a sugar baby and that she also had a boyfriend whom she fell in love with and pregnant with. As Grace decides to investigate as the South African and the UK Police aren't keen on properly solving the case, she signs up for the Sugar Baby site pretending to be her daughter. Here she meets a few of the men Abi talked to, one in particular wants to help Grace discover the truth as he cared for Abi like a daughter. What will happen though when Grace starts to receive threatening phone calls and messages that if she doesn't back off Ella will die too and even more so when Grace is almost run off the road, who killed Abi and wants the secret to never come out? This was a great read and makes readers also wonder who can we trust when our family is hurt as those you think are friends could be your enemies in disguise. If you love UK fiction and psychological thrillers, then check out Miranda Rijks as you will not be disappointed.

I enjoyed the authors writing
The characterisation is good and the plot was compelling
There were lots of twists and turns
A good thriller

Due to a sudden, unexpected passing in the family a few years ago and another more recently and my subsequent (mental) health issues stemming from that, I was unable to download this book in time to review it before it was archived as I did not visit this site for several years after the bereavements. This meant I didn't read or venture onto netgalley for years as not only did it remind me of that person as they shared my passion for reading, but I also struggled to maintain interest in anything due to overwhelming depression. I was therefore unable to download this title in time and so I couldn't give a review as it wasn't successfully acquired before it was archived. The second issue that has happened with some of my other books is that I had them downloaded to one particular device and said device is now defunct, so I have no access to those books anymore, sadly.

This means I can't leave an accurate reflection of my feelings towards the book as I am unable to read it now and so I am leaving a message of explanation instead. I am now back to reading and reviewing full time as once considerable time had passed I have found that books have been helping me significantly in terms of my mindset and mental health - this was after having no interest in anything for quite a number of years after the passings. Anything requested and approved will be read and a review written and posted to Amazon (where I am a Hall of Famer & Top Reviewer), Goodreads (where I have several thousand friends and the same amount who follow my reviews) and Waterstones (or Barnes & Noble if the publisher is American based). Thank you for the opportunity and apologies for the inconvenience.

this is a solid beach read thriller and it kept me entertained. The characters were believable and I loved to come back to it.

I really enjoyed reading The Arrangement by Miranda Rijks. It was so good, I actually read this book in one day! It definitely kept me on my toes! A mother trying to make it on her own when her daughter is murdered. At first it looks like an opportunistic killing, but her mother did not agree that this was an opportunistic murder. The book is about how a mother gets justice for her daughter. She finds out things that shock her, but she keeps on the path to catch her daughter's killer. You won’t believe who the killer is! This was an excellent read! Loved it!

I could not have higher praise for Miranda Rijks as an author, and after reading this book I jumped straight into looking for more of hers. I love a psychological thriller, and this was very intriguing. A well-written plot that flowed well, gathering momentum at a decent pace which meant I struggled to put the book down. The only reason I gave 4 stars is because at times I struggle when I am required to suspend disbelief to fully get into the storyline, but fortunately this didn't detract from the overall book.

Grace is a divorced mother of 2 girls. When her oldest daughter, Abi, goes on holiday and her body turns up, someone is arrested but it doesn't make sense to Grace. She is determined to find out who is responsible for killing her daughter. It's not an easy journey, discovering her daughter had a secret life and old habits start up, which doesn't help her trying to convince others that she believes the wrong person was arrested. It also appears that someone is wanting Grace to question her own mental state. Who killed her beautiful daughter Abi?

I enjoyed this book. It held my interest.

This was the first book i have read by this author and it won’t be the last, this was a well thought out thriller that kept me hooked from start to finish and I couldn’t put it down

This book was very well written and I enjoyed it from beginning to end. Can't wait to get my hands on the next one! Highly recommended.
TB

WoW........... The arrangement by Miranda Rijks was another excellent book I was hooked from the beginning till the end.,

I highly recommend all Miranda's books and are great for your holiday.

Big Thank you to Netgalley for my copy in exchange for a review.

Do we really know anyone? Even those closest to us? This book will make you question everything and everyone you think you know in your relationships!

WOW! WOW! WOW! This is my fourth Miranda read by Rijks and she is fast becoming a go-to author for me with this addictive domestic thriller THE ARRANGEMENT grabbing me from the very first page and gripping me until the swipe of the last page. Upon beginning the book, I'm not sure what I expected but it is certainly unputdownable and engaging throughout...no matter how unlikeable the characters may be. I could have easily devoured it in one sitting had it not been for real life getting in the way...lol

The prologue is incredibly intriguing to say the least as it opens in a bar in Cape Town in South Africa where Abi is unknowingly observed. Who is it that is watching her? Who is it that appears to bear a grudge against her with the disturbing thought of making her pay? Who follows her down to the deserted beach in the middle of the night, thus taking her by surprise with a knife to the heart? Who killed Abi Woods?

Back home in Horsham on the south east of England, Grace Woods awakes to the news that her daughter has been murdered. She is beside herself with grief and filled with questions as to who would want to kill her...and why? Abi was well loved and liked. She was at university in Durham where she wanted to pursue her studies and become a solicitor. And she had saved all her money working every shift she could as a barista to join her friends Becky and Ethan for three weeks in Cape Town on their gap year. So what happened? Why was she killed? Where were Becky and Ethan?

And then when she learns that her friends weren't even in Cape Town when Abi arrived, Grace begins to dig into her daughter's life in an attempt to uncover some answers and hopefully learn what she had been hiding and if it had lead to her murder. But the rabbit hole in which she finds herself, whilst battling her own demons, Grace quickly discovers that there was much more to her daughter's life than she knew. Shocked and a little perturbed, Grace finds solace in alcohol and the sneaky ciggy as she tries to piece together her daughter's secret life. But as her sobriety begins to spiral it becomes clear that someone doesn't want her delving too deep. She receives threats...Dalek-like phone calls...a snapchat from "Abi's ghost"...all warning her to stop her digging or she will risk the life of not only herself but her remaining daughter Ella.

Predictably, when Grace does reach out for help no one believes her, attaching their own beliefs to her drinking in that she is imagining things and is therefore just paranoid. No one is out to get her. Abi is dead. Just move on. But Grace can't move on...not until she uncovers the truth. All the while she continues to bury herself deeper into an alcoholic haze of sleep and oblivion to escape the pain. She is alone and she is terrified...and she is being silently watched.

Despite her grief, I have to say Grace really did get on my nerves. She made it so easy for the villain to make her the scapegoat in it all with her drinking. No one would suspect for a minute everything Grace was claiming with the amount of alcohol she was drowning herself in each day. She adamantly refused to accept that she was an alcoholic and that she could control her drinking...as if every alcoholic hasn't said the very same thing. It's a lie they tell themselves to justify their drinking. She's not an alcoholic - that's a medical condition, they can't help themselves whereas she can. Or so she tells herself. Her constant metaphoric self flagellation followed by one drink, two drinks, free jinks...zzzzzzz... Just grated on me a little. I don't know how she expected to get to the truth if she continually drank herself into oblivion each night. But...having said that, grief is such a complex emotion and she had just lost her daughter so tragically. And her life just seemed to be a series of unfortunate events from then on. But it was the ending that, surprisingly, brought tears to my eyes. I was actually moved by those final pages.

THE ARRANGEMENT is a quick and entertaining read that I could have easily devoured in one sitting, had real life not intervened. It is well written and intriguing that explores the depth of grief amidst tragedy. There are secrets, lies, loss, betrayal and so much more in this book that will have you turning the pages at the speed of light to uncover the truth! I had my suspects - well, two really - and then it hit me who it just had to be! Was I right? Indeed I was...but will you be able to figure it out amidst the red herrings Miranda Rijks peppers throughout?

A totally fabulous addition to her repertoire, THE ARRANGEMENT is a spine-tingling thrill ride from start to finish. I loved it and cannot recommend Miranda Rijks enough to fellow domestic thriller fans of this genre.

I would like to thank #MirandaRijks, #NetGalley and #InkubatorBooks for an ARC of #TheArrangement in exchange for an honest review.

This review appears on my blog at https://stinathebookaholic.blogspot.com/.

This book is so so so good! Right from the very first page I knew I was going to lose sleep, and I did! This is easily a read in one sitting thriller.

This book is the perfect example of a mother's love and devotion and a gentle reminder that sometimes we don't always know the people we love as well as we think we do. Doesn't everyone have secrets?

Both suspenseful and emotional! I love how the author tied all the ends up neatly in the closing of the chapter. There are no loose ends left for readers to wonder about.

This wasn't for me at all I am afraid

Grace was a truly horrid character. There wasn't a single thing I liked about her and it was hard to feel empathy for her even though she had lost her daughter.
For a 40 something woman she was really closed minded and just immature.

The whole drama over the sugar bowl thing was comical...and just made it hard reading. What a drama!

The way she treated everyone around her..throwing accusations at strangers over a mutual arrangement....hurling insults at family and friends..terrorising her godchildren...it was just tough going.

What was even more disappointing was I figured most of it out in the first couple of chapters so the ending was a huge let down.

I think if I had empathised with Grace on any level this book would have been much more likeable but since I couldn't stand her...that made the story difficult. The fact that I figured out the mystery early on wouldn't have mattered if the characters had been strong enough to carry the story.

I was also fairly uncomfortable and disappointed by the rampant stereotypes throughout the story. One example being. Something along the lines of.. "Against all odds the mixed race son of a single mother did well" ..what exactly is against the odds nowadays? Ethnicity or single motherhood? Surely neither are an issue? The author made it an insult but it isn't one.

We are very poor being another stereotype
..there are an awful lot of people using food banks all over the world...I really don't think anyone in this story had any idea what struggling for money is actually like and I did take exception to that.

Overall this wasn't for me.

Thanks to the author, publisher and Netgalley for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

3.5 stars for this twisty thriller. I did not see the ending coming. I thought I had it all figured out. I never expected who the antagonist was. Definitely recommend if you want a thriller that will throw you for a loop!
tw: young adult child death

Quick, suspenseful read. Abi is on holiday in Cape Town when she is murdered. Grace, Abi’s mom, is devastated by the news and the information learned after Abi is murdered. Who killed her sweet girl? Who was Abi really? What secrets was she hiding? Who can Grace trust? Every time I thought I had it figured out there was a new twist that had me back at square one - until the end!! Such a great read!! I could t put it down.

Thank you NetGalley, Miranda Rijeka and Inkubator Books for this edition and hearing my honest review. Looking forward to reading more with you
#partner

This was definitely not my favorite, and not even a day after finishing this, I not remember anything about the plot... that usually tells me that I did not enjoy this book at all

Thank you for the opportunity to read this book, not my usual author but I gave it ago and really was surprised how easy it was to read, good story and enjoyed it even the ending

The premise of this book had so much promise, but unfortunately - for me anyway - I found it rather lacking in structure and pace. The storyline itself did sound intriguing, but I just couldn't feel myself being drawn in by this book.

Grace waves her daughter off at the airport, never to see her again. She refuses to believe the official verdict and does her own digging and doesn’t like what she finds. I have always really liked the books I’ve read by this author but not this one. It was tedious the way Grace always thought she knew best, not to mention the whinging and as for the endless alcohol, well I simply turned the pages, not even skim reading them. It was also predictable, sorry to say. I liked that it was set in Horsham, West Sussex. Despite this blip, still looking forward to the next book!

This book was okay, but the description on the cover, A psychological thriller with a stunning twist,' was a stretch of the imagination. The premise of this book was better than the execution.



The Prologue is written in the third person present tense PoV of the killer, as he/she watches the victim and then kills her in cold blood.



In Chapter 1, we are taken to the first-person present tense PoV of Grace Woods, a divorced single mother of two girls, 21-year-old Abigail and 17-year-old Ella. We meet Grace on the morning on which the police inform her that Abigail, who had gone on a holiday to Cape Town, has been found dead on a beach there.

Grace’s ex-husband Bob is now settled into his new life, with wife Sue and 5-year-old son. But Grace whose life is invested in her daughters finds herself broken and relapsing into an alcohol addiction that she had steered away from for a decade. Her best friends, Natasha and Ruth pitch in to help the household.

Slowly Grace discovers things about Abi that she finds hard to believe. She learns that Abi was a sugar baby, who had three regular sugar daddies, that she arrived at Cape Town a full five days before she was to meet her close friends, Becky and Ethan, the daughter and son of Natasha and Ruth respectively, and that she was pregnant.

South African police arrest a drug addict for the murder of Abi and close the case, but Grace can’t accept this as the truth. Her intuition tells her that Abi’s death was not a random killing.

But somebody is not happy with Grace’s snooping. She begins to receive threats and feels conflicted about whether to look for the truth or get on with her life. When her anxiety gets the better of her, she takes recourse to alcohol, and slowly loses her grip on reality.

Will Grace solve the mystery of who killed her daughter? Or will the killer get to her?



Between the main narrative from Grace’s PoV, we see blog posts from Anya’s blog. Anya was the pseudonym under which Abigail featured on the sugar daddy site. The style of writing is markedly different from the style used in Grace’s narrative.

The author did a fabulous job of showing Grace’s decline, the speed at which she gives way, giving in to her addiction and messing her relationship with her only living daughter, Ella. It also prompts us to think of her as being a not-quite-reliable witness.

But it occupied far too much space in the story. I can’t stand it when protagonists give in to their alcohol addictions and sleepwalk their way through the plot. It’s an easy plot trope that almost all thriller authors take recourse to, particularly if the character is female. I’d like to see a novel in which the protagonist isn’t addicted to substances of any kind.

The book unwittingly poses a critique of marriages, where ultimately every secure relationship seems to show the strain. The other characters such as Natasha and Ruth have stable marriages, but the chinks in their relationships are showing.



The book held my interest well, but I would have liked it even more if there had been less of Grace’s alcohol addiction and more of the dynamics between the sugar daddies and the sugar babies. The book purports to hinge on the arrangement and I expected to see more of that. It was unbelievable that a sugar daddy would pay vast sums of money for a platonic relationship. Those old men are sleazy and they aren’t about to shower fortunes for some pleasant chit-chat.

At the end of it, I didn’t know what to think of Abi. I didn’t find her likeable, certainly not the way her close friends projected her as having made the world a better place. Just how did she do that? Becky and Ethan both swore that she was a great friend, but we didn’t get to see any of that in real time.

Also, Ella, at 17, should have been a lot more mature and at least attempted to understand her mother. There are kids way younger who mature fast when tragedy enters their lives. But Ella chose to cry for help and run to her father’s house.

Some more chapters from Abi’s PoV might have helped us to understand her motivations. The blog posts are not enough.