⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ I finished this in one day!
This is a story about three foster kids turned sisters, growing up in an abusive foster home, with a narcissistic foster mother. The story is told in past and present day timelines. When the grown sisters get a call that their old foster home has been demolished and human bones have been found underneath, they have to return and face the past they want to forget.
This story was so engaging from page one. The story flowed so well I finished it in one day. It was fast paced, but also has great character building, I felt connected to these sisters and their stories. I highly recommend this book. Another great one from Sally Hepworth!

Multi perspective, multi timeline. Hooks you RIGHT away. Great character development in all characters aided in the combination of past and present timelines.

I predicted a fair bit of some of the twists but not the way it all wrapped up. Hepworth did a phenomenal job creating a TRULY monstrous character the likes of Nurse Ratchet in Miss Fairchild! This one will stick with you!

Man I did not enjoy this. I think it was honestly misrepresented in advertising and as what Hepworth usually writes. For me, this was definitely not a thriller/mystery and wasn’t in the genre at all. It slogged on and switched between three characters and their past perspectives weaving a story of abuse, foster care, and child endangerment. As a survivour, this came across as a weird glorified story of children that are abused, are messed up as adults, and then by the end it’s all good to go. I had a hard time finding any interest in this as it was all just abuse, abuse, this child was abused. It wasn’t even triggering, it just lacked any sort of depth. It read more like a fucked up memoir of being raised by an abusive foster parent than any sort of thriller or crime story. And then at the very end, PLOT TWIST, this person was lying THE. WHOLE. TIME. This really missed for me and I honestly don’t think I’d read another by this authour in the future.

Thanks to NetGalley for an ARC

A very unique twist! But I thought the end was a little anticlimactic. I would have loved to see a little more justice served. Overall a hard book to read but good.

Thank you NetGalley, Sally Hepworth, and St. Martins Press for giving me the opportunity to read and review the ARC of Darling Girls by Sally Hepworth.

I greatly enjoyed the storyline, characters, twists, & turns. The book was hard to put down because I wanted to know immediately what was going to happen next.

I highly recommend this book. Job well done. 👏

Thank you to netgalley and the publisher for the eARC of this book. This was my first novel by this author. I enjoyed the book. It was dark and the characters were well developed..I did find the ending a little rushed but overall was a good read!

Many thanks to Netgalley St Martin’s Press for providing me this ARC in exchange for my honest review.

4 starts for Sally Hepworth and her newest thriller “Darling Girls”. Three adolescent girls spend time as foster kids in the home of an abusive and sociopath foster mother. The bonds that form between the girls are unbreakable as they grow into “sisters” and remain very close as adults still tying to cope with the affects of their trauma.

The twists and turns start when a child’s body is found under their previous foster home and keep coming until the very last page.

Don’t miss this psychological thriller… a superbly written and immensely engaging story.

First off thanks to netgalley for providing me an ARC!

Jessica was living at Wild Meadow with Miss Fairchild, a foster home. Initially, everything was okay, but overtime the grooming definitely set in.. And all Jessica wanted to do was make Miss Fairchild happy.
Then came Norah, she had a history of fighting back when people wronged her, and unfortunately that gave her a reputation of being violent.
This is when things shifted and Jessica was no longer the focal in Miss Fairchilds life and when the abuse stepped up a notch.
Then came Alicia, who originally was only suppose to be there a couple days while her Grammy healed, but ended up staying once her grandmother died.
Flash forward to many years later when a body is found under Wild Meadow. The sister reunite and return home to be apart of the investigation.

Overall, it was well written and I enjoy the switching of time and perspectives. However, there's a lot of abuse of kiddos in this book - which I'm sure is part of the point but it did make it hard to read and I wouldn't recommend it to parents who may be sensitive to that.

This is officially my new favorite book by Sally Hepworth. I couldn’t put it down and was completely satisfied with the ending. Highly recommend!

Tucked away in a farmhouse estate known as Wild Meadows, Jessica, Norah, and Alicia live under the care of their foster mother, Miss Fairchild. To the casual onlooker, Wild Meadows is a haven for wayward and otherwise orphan children with a caretaker who has devoted her entire life to them.

Behind closed doors, however, Wild Meadows is a nightmare.

Decades after the traumatic end to their time under Miss Fairchild's care, Jessica, Norah, and Alicia learn that a body has been found beneath the house at Wild Meadows. And just like that, the girls are summoned back to the place they risked their very lives to escape. Because if there's one thing they learned at Wild Meadows, it's that they weren't the last young girls to find themselves tangled in Miss Fairchild's web, and the truth may finally set them free.

And just like that, readers, Sally Hepworth is back at full force with "Darling Girls." Riddled with the very same pulse-pounding suspense that we came to know and love in "The Mother-in-Law" and "The Good Daughter," "Darling Girls" is a well-crafted, perfectly-placed story that is near impossible to put down. With both compelling dual perspectives and dual timelines that follow Jessica, Norah, and Alicia both during and after foster care, everything comes together in a jaw-dropping moment that reminds us once and for all: Sally Hepworth really is the queen of the ending-after-the-ending.

I just finished this book and oh my goodness!!! It was so good! It is definitely a slow burn kind of thriller but i didn't mind. I loved the multiple pov and how it jumps from past to present to learn more about each character and what they went through! Throughout the book, I threw out multiple theories and in the end, all of my theories were wrong which i loved! if i can guess the twists, it loses points in my mind. I am rating this book 4.5/5 stars!

Darling Girls is another satisfying, twisty mystery/thriller by Sally Hepworth. I recommend this title and all of her previous novels.

I am a library associate and received an advance copy from #NetGalley.

Another great book by Sally Hepworth. I love the subtle twists and turns. Unlike other authors, you don't feel like everything is upended when one comes to light. I loved the way the characters were intertwined throughout the book. I continue to be a big fan!

Book Title: Darling Girls
Author: Sally Hepworth
Publisher: Saint Martin’s Press
Genre: Psychological Thriller
Pub Date: April 28, 2024
My Rating: 3.7 rounded up
Pages: 368

Twenty-five years ago Alicia Connelly, Jessica Lovat and Norah Anderson were foster “sisters”, and lived at Wild Meadows Farms a foster home (aka- House of Horrors) in Port Agatha. Today they seem somewhat like average women. True, Jessica is a bit OCD and Norah has some anger issues. And Alicia has low self-esteem. However they have a bond that average women don’t have it started when they lived on a farm with a foster mother named Miss Fairchild -who was cruel and abusive.

The three foster sisters all have flashbacks from their time at Wild Meadows.
Jessica is the oldest of the trio and arrived at the home when she was five years old; and in desperate in need of a mother’s love.
Norah is the youngest and was eleven when she arrived and always was violence as it seemed necessary.
Alicia is in the middle – a year younger than Jessica and a year older than Norah. She arrived when she was twelve-year-old as her grandmother was in an accident and her stay was only supposed to be temporary. Reading their back story was not a pleasant experience.
The Housemother Holly Fairchild is wicked to say the least.

Now in their thirties the three women each receive a phone call regarding human bones found under the demolition site farmhouse at Wild Meadows (as they were building a new MacDonald’s.
The story is a wild ride of Past and Present; told in alternating POVs additionally a mystery voice of someone in Dr. Warren’s psychotherapy session. (However this person really isn’t a big mystery.)

This is my eight Sally Hepworth novel ] the other seven I read were outstanding 5 star reads! I was expecting the same with this story!

However as I was reading it I thought ~ Yikes! I believe Ms. Hepworth’s evil twin wrote this; it just doesn’t seem to be her normal style. It was more disturbing than I expected.
The shocking ending YES! I expected that But…Child abuse?
However, her acknowledgements made it clearer why she wrote this.
She tells us about her research. She spoke with women who were raised in foster care. Also points out that although there are villains but for every villain there is in foster care there are hundreds of heroes- helping children who are living in this failed system.
Sisterhood and friendship are definitely a part of this story and I know abuse and other trauma a child experienced can follow through adulthood.

Ms. Hepworth is still one of my favorite authors although this story wasn’t an enjoyable read due to the child abuse - however Sally Hepworth is an amazing story teller! So Yes! I definitely am looking forward to her next story

Want to thank NetGalley and Saint Martin’s Press for this early eGalley.
Publishing Release Date scheduled for April 28, 2024

Somehow I missed writing my review for this book. I usually do a rough draft as soon as I’m done so I don’t forget some of the important points. Hopefully I can still catch the essence of my thoughts several weeks later.
Alicia, Jessica, and Norah met when they were in the foster care system. Miss Fairchild was their foster mother, and to put it mildly, she was like a hot and cold faucet. It only provided freezing, cold water or hot scalding water after a while. The only thing that they could count on was each other.
Many years have passed when the police contact each of them. Bones have been found under their old foster home, and they return to provide information. Told in the past and in the present, a bleak picture takes shape detailing not only how they wound up under Miss Fairchild’s care, but also how their pasts have shaped their present lives.
This was full of a lot of drama, many twists and turns, and the abuse these children suffered was heartbreaking. A sad story and one that kept me flipping the pages to find out the identity of the bones, and if any of these people were somehow involved.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

What a pleasure to read an ARC of Sally Hepworth’s Darling Girls! This is an author I often recommend to others. It’s common for me to finish one of her books and immediately text someone to add the book to their TBR list.

This is a domestic thriller told through multiple POVs in past and present storylines. Foster sisters Alicia, Jessica, and Norah have a strong bond after initially meeting at Wild Meadows foster home as children. Now, as adults in their 30’s, they continue to be close to each other while struggling with their childhood trauma in different ways. They find themselves back near Wild Meadows after detectives contact them to discuss human remains that were found while the Wild Meadows house was being demolished. But whose body was found? How did it get there? And when?

The author provided great character development and made it easy for me to fail reading “just one more chapter”. I was always left ready for more at the end of each chapter as more pieces of the puzzle were sprinkled throughout the book. I did get nervous as I neared the last 50 or so pages because it felt like everything was ending predictably and in a neat little bow without any twists. Thankfully, I was satisfied with the ending which did provide a great twist that was very fitting for that specific character. As a social worker myself, I appreciated that while the corrupted side of the system is a main focus of the book, it still points out the loving caring individuals who dedicate their lives to children who deserve more than the bare minimum in their lives.

While this book didn’t reach 5 star territory for me as other Hepworth books have, it was still a wonderful read and one I will recommend to others.

Triggers included child abuse (isolation, neglect, physical and sexual abuse). When referenced, enough detail was provided so the reader understood the related trauma, but it was not overly specific/detailed.

Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for providing a digital ARC. Publish date is April 22, 2024.

This feels like old school Sally Hepworth in the best way. This was highly bingeable, I could not put the story down. The story is told in dual timelines and follows three foster girls who spend some time in the same home of Miss Fairchild, a foster home of horrors and told in the present day where bones have been discovered from the home they were in. The story rotates between the three foster sisters and a fourth mystery woman. While you can figure out the fourth voice, it still doesn't prepare you for the rest of how the story unravels.

I'm still sitting on my thoughts for this one but I think this may be her best book yet. Sally writes complex female relationships so well. This is more disturbing and sinister than any of her previous books, which I was not expecting. I loved learning more about the girls and how the trauma affected them differently, how they coped, and what they still struggle with currently. While I did not see the ending twist - I also didn't know if it was truly necessary and added for effect. There are a lot of TW that come with this book.

Recommend if you enjoy:
Bingeable, popcorn thrillers
Sister stories
Twists and well done reveals

Sally Hepworth is one of my favorite authors and her latest did not disappoint. I really enjoyed getting to know each character and understanding their response to the trauma experienced in their lives. Yes, this book is full of triggers and child abuse is difficult to read. However, understanding the life experiences of others is important and the way the content was delivered actually did not bother me. However, please be clear that it was on the page and not sugar coated. I was only able to predict one twist and I don't think the author was really trying to hide it. The ending and other twists came as a surprise which is always a pleasure. In addition, there were some really funny moments and Norah was a really funny character. The author was able to strike a balance in order to allow the reader the space to legitimately laugh during some moments of this really tough tale.




Expected publication date: April 23, 2024

Thank You to St. Martin’s Press for the gifted ARC provided through NetGalley. It was my pleasure to offer an honest review.

As always, a stellar book by Sally Hepworth! She never disappoints and had me engaged and on the edge of my seat throughout the whole book. Highly recommend reading this.

This might be her best yet! Three girls become sisters when placed into the foster care of Miss Fairchild. A foster home of horrors. The twist at the end was specular - never saw it coming! Darling Girls is a fast-paced psychological thriller that pulls you in from the first page and keeps you until the end. Thank you to St. Martin's Press, Sally Hepworth, and Netgalley.