I absolutely loved this book! It took awhile to get used to the jumping between characters aspect of it but it pulled me in until I just had to finish to find out what was going to happen!

Well done.  I felt like a visitor and was privileged to tag along as the truth is unearthed

Fiona Barton, the author of The Child is a former reporter and is able bring her journalist narrator, Kate Waters, to life with realistic details. She is a character I would happily follow to another book. Kate is only one of four women who tell the story of a tiny skeleton found at a building site. Alternating viewpoints can be confusing, but it works well here. Each woman knows a part of the story, no one knows it all until Kate's persistent digging brings them all together as decades old secrets are exposed. 

This is the first book I've read by Fiona Barton. I plan to look up her first novel and keep my eye open for the next one.

I enjoyd this, however not as much as Barton's first book. I found it similar in feel, but for some reason it just didn't hit as much with me. Though without having kids I find that books that drama around motherhood sometimes don't hit the mark for me. I also guessed the entire ending pretty early on, which I don't usually do so easily.

When construction workers unearth an infant's skeleton while razing a street of homes from the 70's four characters' otherwise quiet lives explode. There is Kate, an old school journalist, desperate to remove herself from celebrity click-bait articles, who goes on a hunt for the truth. Angela, whose own newborn baby went missing from the hospital 40 years ago, is sure this must be her long lost child--an end to her decades-long quest for answers. There is Jude, whose home this skeleton was found behind. Finally there is Emma, Jude's daughter. Emma's concealed past is integral to solving the mystery of the dead child.

A tale of women doing the best that they can to keep their heads up during tough, sometimes unnavigable, circumstances. This emotional novel is a lovely mix of women lit and engaging mystery. Kate, a character Fiona Barton introduced in "The Widow", is the star of the book. Sympathetic, complex, and driven, she leads the story. Recommended!

Fiona Barton's second novel, The Child, releases on Tuesday, June 27/17. I figure if I give you a heads up today, you too can spend a day on the beach next weekend devouring it - I did!

Barton is a former journalist. Her first book, The Widow, (my 5 star review) took inspiration from real life, trials and newspaper stories, as does the lead character in The Child.

Kate, a reporter, sees this story " 'Baby's Body Found.' Two small sentences told how an infant's skeleton had been unearthed on a building site..." And she wonders "Who is the baby? How did it die? Who would bury a baby?"

What a great premise - I too want to know the answers. Kate is not the only person to see the news story. The Child is told from four alternating points of view - that of Kate and three other women. Each of those three has a reason to hope - or fear - their own ties to the little skeleton. I love multiple point of view books - the reader is privy to the information that each character is holding - or hiding. And we can only hold our breath as (in this case) Kate gets closer and closer to the truth. Now, that being said, I thought I had fit the pieces together about halfway through the book. But, as one character also says..."I don't know what to think anymore. Everything is wrong. I've got everything wrong." I was quite happy to not have guessed!

The Child is a character driven novel of suspense. Kate is a wonderful lead. I wonder if there are bits of Barton's own journalistic days woven into her character? The details of the investigation and newsroom ring very true. The other three women are just as well drawn - their connections to the child are quite poignant, shocking and in one case absolutely infuriating. I'm deliberately being obtuse - The Child is a story you need unfold and discover as the pieces are slowly put together. Although I will say this - motherhood is a prominent theme and thread that ties the four stories together. "Disturbing the surface had triggered an eruption of unexpected secrets."

The Child was an absolutely addicting pager turner for this reader! Definitely recommended.

Fast-paced, entertaining mystery. Great character development and plot. Liked being back in the trenches with Kate Waters. Hope this isn't the last we see of her.

This book was so engrossing, I could not put it down. I liked The Widow, but this is definitely even better.

Just when I think I should start calling myself a plot driven reader versus a character driven reader, I read a story like this where I find that the part that doesn't click for me is the characters and not the story. I found the story in this book very engaging and clever- while I had an idea what the main plot twist was, I definitely hadn't pieced together exactly how it would happen and how all the pieces of this book would fall together. However, I felt that I didn't get to know the characters terribly well, which made it hard to connect with them, even as I wanted to spend more time with them to understand Emma's distress and Angela's despair. I think the short chapters and quickly alternating viewpoints were part of the issue, just as I was getting ready to learn more about a character, I had to switch, and it would take me a bit to connect back with the other character. 

I was a bit hesitant going into this book as I really had not cared for the author's last book, but I knew that it was possibly the fact that I was sensitive to the material in the last book and maybe had disliked it due more to personal reasons than anything being truly at issue with the writing in the book. Fortunately for this reader, The Child provided a much better reading experience. Ultimately, though, I think this might be a case where this author's writing is just not for me.

Very sorry, but this was a DNF for me. It may have been my mood, but I just couldn't get into the story.  My apologies.

Fiona Barton’s prior book The Widow was a mystery told from the point of view of three characters, including crack reporter Kate Waters. I enjoyed it, and was pleased to receive an advance copy of Ms. Barton’s latest, The Child, from Berkley Publishing Group and NetGalley in exchange for my honest review.

Similar in structure to The Widow,, The Child is told from the points of view of three main characters, this time all women:

Kate Waters is back as the intrepid journalist, looking for her next big story as she watches the newspaper business changing around her. “The tsunami of online news had washed her and those like her to a distant shore.”
Emma Simmonds is a young editor whose extreme anxiety about whether he past might catch up to her seems to be threatening the stability she has found in the married life she has created for herself. “He doesn’t know me really. I’ve made sure.”
Angela Irving has a mother’s intuition and her identity as a mother is shaded by the devastating loss she suffered 20+ years ago when her infant was stolen from the hospital right after its birth. “People say what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger…it doesn’t. It breaks your bones, leaving everything splintered and held together with grubby bandages and yellowing sticky tape...Fragile and exhausting to hold together. Sometimes you wish it had killed you.”
The plot centers around the grisly discovery of the skeleton of an infant, unearthed at a construction site. Each of the primary characters has a connection to the unfolding story of the “Building Site Baby,” and this propels the narrative.

The structure of the novel works well and the characters are well drawn. We learn so much about them as their individual searches for the meaning of this event occur. Emma, for example, has a husband who works at a University. Her view of his work environment? “University departments are like prides of lions, really. Lots of males preening and screwing around and hanging on to their superiority by their dewclaws.” (Having worked at a college, I LOVED this line!). Barton’s excellent descriptive skills are clear as Emma reminisces about a house where she lived as a child: “I can still smell that house; years of patchouli oil overlaid by grime, suffocating and musky like a hippie’s old afghan coat.”

 I’m one of those people who NEVER solves the mystery in advance, but even I could see this one coming, so it lost a star there. But that didn’t detract from the enjoyment I experienced as I read this book. I look forward to more from Ms. Barton. Four stars.

One of the four women voicing the story is journalist Kate Waters, returning from Fiona Barton’s first and previous thriller, <i>The Widow</i>. Having a reporter as investigator is a compelling take on the police procedural, and Kate alternately sparring and collaborating with detectives to get her scoops provides a great deal of the fun in this dark, twist-filled book about loss and redemption. 

My full review -- protected by an NDA, unfortunately -- appears in the "Editors Picks" section for June on the web site of a major bookseller

This was the first book of Fiona Barton that I have read and I really enjoyed it. I liked how the author drew your attention one way, only to have it twist!   I did figure it out about 3/4 of the way through, but it still held my attention and I liked the way she wrapped everything up.  Now I'm going to go back and read her other book The Widow and look forward to more!

I guess I'm one of the few mystery lovers on the planet that didn't read Fiona Barton's debut, The Widow, last year.  The Widow won all kinds of awards, including an NPR Best Book of 2016 accolade.  I stumbled onto The Child, the author's sophomore attempt, and was pleasantly surprised. It is a snappy, cozy little Brit mystery with interesting characters and a major plot twist ending.  No one changes bodies, there isn't a shape-shifter killer, yet Fiona Barton masterfully weaves all the clues together to form a satisfying, realistic and just creepy enough ending. 

I really like the main character, Kate Waters. She is an old-school reporter still fighting for respect as a newspaper woman in a digital age.  Remember newspaper journalists? I kind of miss those hard-hitting-go-after-the-story characters, despite police warnings to back off.  Whatever happened to those guys? Nowadays the local news reports are mostly filled with Facebook and Twitter highlights.  Kate Waters is in The Widow, but the books are not part of a series. Read either one first, it won't matter to the plot, and you will enjoy both.

There are a handful of other characters in the book and the author does not bog down in the details of their lives, making for fast page turning. The plot is somewhat complicated, not overly so, and it still moves at a steady clip. 

This must be the year of missing baby mysteries, but unlike Michael Robotham's The Secrets She Keeps, The Child is multi-layered and much more interesting mainly due to the relatable character of Kate Waters.  This is definitely a page-turner for your Summer 2017 TBR stack. Now please excuse me while I go download The Widow.

Sorry I did not have time to read this book before the archive date.

A stellar second novel by Fiona Barton. Read it straight through!

4.5/5 stars.
I completely adored Fiona Barton’s debut novel The Widow and was eagerly awaiting her second novel The Child. I enjoyed The Child just as much, it not slightly more than The Widow. This novel is a must read, for readers that have a fondness for a great mystery, with plot twist you will never see coming, and filled with an extraordinary cast of characters. LOVED IT!!

*Thank you to the author, publisher, and netgalley for an advance reader copy in exchange for an honest review.*

"The Child" by Fiona Barton will be released on June 27, 2017. I had heard of Ms. Barton's phenomenal success with "The Widow" so I was happy to try her next stand alone mystery, "The Child". The two books are not a series but two separate stories that are unrelated to one another.

Journalist Kate Waters picks up on a small story about a newborn's bones being found at a construction site in a newly developing part of London and she wants to know more. After learning that the bones are old, Kate goes on a hunt for who would have buried a baby in the backyard of an old crumbling house. She believes the baby's story deserves to be told. When a forty year old crime involving the disappearance of a newborn from a hospital crops up Kate knows there's something to tell here. The parents are still devastated and wonder what happened to baby Alice.

Through dogged research and door to door interviews, Kate Waters discovers more buried secrets than just a baby. The trick is to connect all the lies to get at the truth.

This was one of those slow burn books for me. When I started it I certainly found Kate's investigative techniques interesting to learn about and it was easy to follow along with her thinking on how to discover what happened to baby Alice. But for at least half of the book, probably almost three quarters of it, I wasn't sure if it would get to a satisfying end. I should have had more faith in the author because by the end not only was I cheering but it was one of those rare, edge of your seat, OH MY GOD moments when everything finally clicks into place. You know those moments, we avid readers crave it like candy or drugs, lol. To come across one of those unique moments in a book seems to make your heart stop and your blood race in the same breath. I found myself leaning forward, begging my eyes to read faster and my brain to process better. I think I may have even squeaked and mumbled a few unintelligible things as the pace quickened. 

This journey was so totally worth the somewhat sluggish middle of the book. In fact, without the slogging I wouldn't have appreciated the spectacular Ahh Haa moment in the end. Much like you need a little broccoli in your life to make the ice cream taste that much better. Don't miss this book and since "The Child" was a five out of five, I suspect her previous book "the Widow" is in fact a five out of five too. The reviews certainly indicate that. I'm guessing I just discovered a  new author for my growing list.

I read this book on vacation. That was a perfect setting. The chapters are relativity short, so I COULD put it down if I wanted to, but I usually didn't want to.

When a dead baby is uncovered at a building site, it affects several women: the reporter trying to track the story, a woman who thinks the baby might be hers, and another woman who is disturbed by it, but we aren't sure why. The story advances through their points of view, as well as the estranged mother of one of the women.  The connections between some of the women is apparent, whereas it's uncertain how some of the women may be connected to one another or to the baby.

The author writes strong -- yet flawed and/or broken -- women well. 

The story unfolds at a pace that is just right, advancing the stories of the women and the unraveling of the mystery concurrently.  I saw some of the twists coming, but I was surprised at one of the reveals at the end of the story.

Though this was a great escapist read, there are several other difficult subjects that are tackled that might be difficult for some to read. For me, they were handled with tact and were not at all exploitive or sensationalized. 

Review will be posted on 7/3 at http://books.5minutesformom.com/41024/the-child/

https://www.rtbookreviews.com/book-review/child-1  RT BookReviews Review