Sally Hepworth really delves into the darkest corners of Foster care with this one!

The origin stories of the three sisters were all so interesting and unique, I didn't have any trouble keep anything straight throughout this twisty, turny, tale.

Although the twists didn't shock me, they were extremely satisfying.

As dark as this one was, there was still hope and love at the center of it.

I loved this book! It was such a quick read for me. I figured out some of the twists which is why I dropped to 4 stars. I love books that keep you on your toes and questioning everyone and everything. Thanks NetGalley for the ARC!

Sally Hepworth can do NO WRONG in my eyes! Darling Girls starts off with Jessica, Norah, and Alicia, foster sisters “lucky” to live on a beautiful farm with their foster mom. But no one realizes the tortured they endured and they’d also like to forget. When a body turns up on the property of their childhood home, old memories come flooding back while they face their past.

Beautiful, fast paced story I couldn’t keep my eyes off of! Fully recommend!

Sally Hepworth is a go to & auto-read author. She has deftly honed her craft at creating domestic suspense thrillers!
Darling Girls might be Sally at her best!

Darling Girls take's inspiration from foster care, former children in care's experiences, and the child welfare system. The story of 3 unrelated foster sisters navigating loss and trauma in a chaotic environment is heart wrenching. Now adults, they are called back to the home after bones have been discovered on the site where their foster home once stood.

This was a cleverly laid out tale with subtle layers that build on one another edging readers along in a slow yet compulsive read!

This book was just okay for me, probably 2.5 stars rounded up to 3. The writing didn’t seem as good compared to the last Sally Hepworth I read, but this was a super quick and entertaining read overall.

Thank you very much to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for this advance copy of Darling Girls by Sally Hepworth in exchange for this honest review. Darling Girls was released this week on 4/23/24 and is available for purchase now!

I was really looking forward to this one and have read a few titles from Hepworth in the past, and this one didn’t hold up as well as her previous ones in my opinion. It’s a bit of a slow burn, and while I think there was enough difference between our three main characters Jessica, Norah and Alicia, there’s a bunch of side characters that are supporting roles and have too similar names - Anna is the lawyer, we have Amy….why so many A names? Also - how old is Miss Fairchild? I had her pictured as an elderly woman, but she shows up in the present, so she can’t be that old. I also found the inserts with the psychiatrist to be a little “out of the story” and took away from the main plot - eventually it was all revealed, but I don’t know if they added anything to the story.

Thank you again to NetGalley and the publishers for this ARC in exchange for this review. Darling Girls is out now for purchase!

I have a new favorite Sally Hepworth novel, and Darling Girls is it! Fast paced, completely enthralling, jaw dropping, heart pounding, emotional, horrifying, and twisty. The twists and turns in this book are astounding. I am still wiping the sweat from my brow from trying to figure out all the characters deeply rich, detailed stories. The three sisters who met in foster care did it for me. All completely different, each coming from varying backgrounds, and all emerging at Wild Meadows. Where Miss Fairchild is their foster mother. For Jessica, Miss Fairfield, started out as a warm and caring woman, which quickly turned. Leaving Jessica to cling and want for the love she is now missing. Norah is one tough nut. She has been to hell and back in her early life. Wild Meadows does not have the other intense horror she has experienced in other homes, and she now has a family with Jessica and Alicia. Alicia is spinning. She was only supposed to stay for a brief time, while her Grammy was in the hospital. All three of these brave girls form a bond that can never be broken. They have shared experiences that cannot be shared or understood by others, so they hold onto one another. In adulthood they are just as close. They receive a call from a detective stating they have found a body at Wild Meadows, and they would like to hear about their time spent there. Leading them back to retell their upbringing and the nightmares they experienced at the hands of Miss Fairchild.

I loved the dual timeline. When the three were at Wild Meadows and now. I love that I was able to see how they grew into their adult lives. The trauma that they all experienced still peeking out here and there. You were allowed into the Australian foster care system, which is terribly similar to the American one. You either land in an amazing home with a loving support system or you land in a traumatizing situation that you cannot get out of. This book is phenomenal, and you do not want to miss out. Thank you to Sally Hepsworth and St. Martin's Press for my gifted copy.

Sally Hepworth is a must-read author of mine, and this book did not disappoint! The pages were packed with drama, suspense, and plenty of secrets. The story is told through alternating timelines and multiple POVs, which I think helped the reader understand each main character better. It added more depth to the narrative. I thought the author did an excellent job of bringing to light the many flaws of the foster care system and the impact childhood trauma can have on one's life. Overall, this book was well-paced, grabbed my attention from the beginning, and had enough twists and turns to make me not want to put it down. It was a well-written and exciting four-star read!

Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for an advanced copy of this book in exchange for my honest opinion!

Darling Girls is a gripping read that's impossible to put down. Told from different perspectives and time periods, this was a thrilling, twisty read that kept me guessing. Loved it!

Ominous, gripping and intense!

Darling Girls is a well-executed, intricate thriller that takes us into the lives of foster care sisters Jessica, Norah, and Alicia, as after bones are discovered buried under the home where they were raised, struggle to come to grips with the actions, scars, treatment, repercussions, and tragedies from their childhoods.

The writing is brisk and tight. The characters are troubled, scarred, and vulnerable. And the plot, using a past/present, back-and-forth style, unfolds and unravels quickly into a compelling tale full of twists, turns, lies, secrets, manipulation, obsession, love, loyalty, jealousy, abuse, and murder.

I’ve been a huge fan of Sally Hepworth since I read The Mother’s Promise in 2017, and whether it’s one of her women’s fiction novels or edge-of-your-seat thrillers, such as this latest release, Darling Girls, I am always riveted, entertained, satisfied and highly impressed.

Another great book by Sally Hepworth! I really enjoyed the book all the way through but the last chapter (!!!!!) the ending blew me away!
Thanks NetGalley, St. Martin’s Press and the author for an ARC of this book.

4.5⭐️ I really liked this book. It’s told in multiple pov from the girls which is nice to see their pov from all the different situations they were in. The mystery was well thought out. I guessed the overall mystery ….sort of which was why I gave it 4.5⭐️.
The last chapter I was like 😳.
Will definitely be reading more of her books.

Thank you Netgalley for the arc.

Sally Hepworth never disappoints! This book was full of all sorts of twists and turns. I kept thinking I had it figured out but then another twist and I was back to square one! Very well written and exciting!

Okay, I get the Sally Hepworth hype now. I haven't been super impressed by some of the other things I've read by her, but this was an absolute un-put-downable psychological thriller. Twists galore, I really did not know how this was going to end and finished the entire thing in one day!

Jessica, Norah and Alicia are bonded by their traumatic childhood at Wild Meadows. Once foster children under the care of Miss Fairchild, they formed a tight sisterhood through the abuse they suffered at the hands of their caretaker. Now, Wild Meadows has been torn down, but in the process bones were found under the house. The three sisters find themselves at the center of the investigation and forced to relive traumatic memories as the police try to understand why there would be bones there in the first place.

From the unreliability of every narrator, three-person plot line, and dual timeline of the book, this was fast-paced and one where I'd say "just one more chapter" to try and circle back to the cliff hanger we were left off on.

I was so satisfied by the way literally every small detail came together into a nicely tied bow at the end. There is nothing more satisfying than when an author mentions a detail that you don't really think will be important and brings it back as a giant important detail in the end.

If you are in need of a good mind bender where you're not quite sure who to trust, put this on your TBR!

A group of foster sisters are bonded for life after traumatic experiences in their childhood home that they then have to revisit decades later.

This was an interesting and fast paced read but didn't really fit the "thriller" or "suspense" genre for me. While I enjoyed the little end twist/reveal in the last chapter, overall I just felt there wasn't much suspense wise. I guess it was kind of a "mystery light"-though the subject matter of child abuse makes it anything but light. The writing felt a little stunted and juvenile at times. And while I realize that an ARC is going to have a multitude of spelling and grammatical errors-my advance copy of this book was just absolutely bogged down by errors. Extra words, repeating sentences, grammatical and spelling, etc. Three stars simply because it was a quick read and relatively entertaining, albeit forgettable.

All the stars for that utterly clever and wicked ending!

Oh my goodness! It’s been a while since I’ve had a five star thriller, but this deserves all the hype and attention!

Thanks NetGalley and St Martin’s Press for the ARC!

Synopsis –

Foster sisters Jessica, Norah & Alicia have always been told that they were lucky to have grown up in the Wild Meadows foster home run by Miss Fairchild. But only they knew what it really was. As they left Wild Meadows under dire circumstances & escaped Miss Fairchild’s hold on them, her presence would never cease to exist in their lives. When some human bones are discovered under the building they were fostered in, the 3 sisters become key witnesses in the case. Were any of them killers?

Review -

Holy moly! What a brilliant plot construction and execution of a classic misdirection by the author. As the narratives shifted between the sisters’ POVs from the past and present, I was instantly sucked into their world of foster care and came under the spell of Miss Fairchild.

Hepworth boldly incorporates the horrors foster children endure and portrays their reverberating consequences through the characters of the 3 sisters. There are several elements at play here – sister dynamics, jealousy, an obsessive and controlling care giver with unpredictable behavioral patterns, impossible rules and terrifying retribution, that were hard to stomach.

I loved how the girls become each other’s rocks, developing a strong bond and sisterhood - amidst the trauma and unthinkable abuse they suffered. I cared for them deeply and really hoped they would turn out ok as adults.

The highlight of the thriller is how the present and the past collide, unearthing several secrets, literally hidden under the foster home’s basement. Until that happens though, let me warn you - not a single person is to be trusted nor anything is to be believed. You will end up slapping you forehead if you do!

With themes of child abuse/neglect, gaslighting, avoidant and toxic attachments, Hepworth has delivered an expertly crafted domestic thriller, that is sure to take you on a twisty ride, with a jaw-dropping final plunge into that shockingly cold ice water! So gear up!

A treat for psychological thriller lovers!

I was a big fan The Soulmate so I had high expectations coming into this book and it did not disappoint! I loved the structure of the book introducing the characters one by one and hearing their backstory from their POV. I also really enjoyed the past and present timelines! It was done very well without it being confusing!
This was a bit of a darker subject matter, but it was still very enjoyable and fast read! And that ending had my jaw on the floor!
I got to say, there are a few grammatical mistakes/typos in the digital ARC I read that I assumed would be fixed in the final copy. But after receiving this book in the BOTM, they were still there. It was nothing to take away from the story, but I can see how that can annoy some people.
It was overall a great read and I’m definitely going to read more of Sally Hepworth.

Thank you to NetGalley, the author and publisher for providing the ARC in exchange of my honest opinion.

4.5 stars. Thank you NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for the ARC. This was my first Sally Hepworth book and I could not put it down! I’ve had quite a few of her books on my TBR list for a while, and will now be bumping them to the top to read in the near future because this was SO good.

The writing, plot, alternating timeline, and unreliable characters made this story so intriguing. As I progressed through the book I was able to guess a few of the twists, but I did NOT see that ending coming! I love when a book shocks me, and this one definitely did.

As a mother especially, the content was occasionally hard to read (trigger warning for child abuse). The instances were written as they pertained to the story, and I didn’t find them to be overly graphic.

I would definitely recommend this book if you’re looking for a quick, enthralling read!

I’ve enjoyed so many of Sally Hepworth’s books but Darling Girls was just ok for me and I’d give it 3.5 stars.

It has a great premise (three girls placed in foster care together remain close – just like sisters – after they matriculate), good characters (the three girls have all endured trauma and each one deals with it a different way), and a great setting (the foster home is an old house called Wild Meadows and is located in country town a few hours from Melbourne). Not to mention the catalyst for much of the sisters’ trauma – their foster mother, Miss Fairchild.

Darling Girls relies on before and after stories and various points of view to fill in the gaps and provide information for the reader. It’s not as much of a thriller as it is a story that unravels the history of the three women. There are some unexpected twists that are quite well-played. But it has an ending that is becoming a little too common – at least based on some of the other books I’ve read recently. It’s the “it’s not quite over and don’t make any assumptions” ending.

Ms Hepworth’s latest book is an easy read and I found it to be entertaining. But, for some reason I just didn’t enjoy it quite as much as I have her other novels. NetGalley provided an advance copy.

Darling Girls by Sally Hepworth
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

I love a thriller that makes me stop and say ‘Wait. What?!?’
Darling Girls did just that (more than once.) 😳😬

This is the story of three girls raised in the same foster care home who become family to each other. These “sisters” were raised by Miss Fairchild who portrays herself as a loving caregiver but is quite different behind closed doors.

The girls finally break free from life with Miss Fairchild and think they’ll be able to move on with their lives. Unfortunately, the past doesn’t want to stay buried.

The sisters are brought back to the foster home as witnesses to a crime when a body is found underneath the home. But are they potential key witnesses or
quickly becoming the prime suspects?

Thanks to @stmartinspress and #netgalley for the eARC of Darling Girls by Sally Hepworth.