I really thought I would enjoy this one, but that didn't happen. I continued reading, but with no genuine concern for the characters or outcome.

I liked The Widow so I really thought that this would be good pick for me. Honestly, it was so incredibly boring and stale. I couldn't even finish it. I was bored by chapter 7.

I really enjoyed the Widow by Fiona Barton, so I was looking forward to her next mystery. And I have no complaints. If not quite as good, it was still a very enjoyable mystery that I can heartily recommend.

This is a fast paced mystery told from the perspective of four different women. Short punchy chapters keep this book moving right along. At first I was worried about keeping the women straight, but no problems there. Kate is a reporter who zeros in on the story of a baby’s skeleton found at the site of old housing units being demolished. I have to say I wasn't a fan of Jude, who struck me as a total narcissist. Emma, her daughter, has her issues, too. And I just felt sorry for Angela, whose baby daughter went missing from the maternity ward a day after her birth.

At the beginning, I had to question Kate being allowed to follow an unproven story line and devote so much time to it in a time of layoffs, but that’s a minor quibble. What makes the novel work well is how the different stories all come together. The relationship between Emma and Jude was the real clincher to keeping my interest.

I figured out what was happening well before Kate did. But that didn’t dampen my enthusiasm for the end of the book.

My thanks to netgalley and Berkley Publishing for an advance copy of this book.

Kate Waters is a news reporter hot on the trail of a story that she hopes will be a big one. A baby’s skeleton has been found in a construction site. Kate can’t get the baby out of her mind. What tragedy was behind the burial of this infant child? Could this baby be the one who was stolen from a maternity ward decades ago? As she digs deeper, secrets come to the surface that will change the lives of three women forever.

The reporter Kate also appears in Ms. Barton’s first book, “The Widow”. The chapters in her new book alternate between three women. First of all is, of course, Kate Waters, the reporter. She’s relentless in the pursuit of truth. Angela is the mother of little Alice who she alleges was stolen from a maternity ward shortly after her birth. Although Angela has two other children, she has never gotten over the loss of her child and longs for closure. And Emma, a woman who seems obsessed with this baby.

The beginning of the book starts off slowly as the author builds her story. It was slow enough that I was considering giving the book 3 stars but the second half of the book pushed my rating up to 4 stars because that’s when I truly became involved in the story. The twist didn’t come as too much of a surprise but it didn’t matter as the main thrust of this book isn’t the “who done it” or even the why but the effect on the characters. I loved how much Kate cared for the people she connected with. I think we have such a callous opinion of reporters, only out for the story no matter what it costs others, so it was refreshing to read of one with a heart. This isn’t so much of a thriller as an in depth character study of three women. We know from the beginning that the baby has died so there’s no suspense there. But the author does a very good job of giving us a look into the hearts and minds of women whose lives were so monumentally affected by one act.

Recommended.

The Child is a psychological suspense that will have you flipping pages as fast as you can to find out what happens! The story is told from the point of view of each of the characters; Kate, the gutsy reporter; Emma, the anxious wife; and Angela, the depressed mom. Each of these characters play a pivotal role in finding out what really happened to the child stolen from the hospital at birth.
I enjoyed this book, it was an easy read that kept me interested and engaged. I’m currently reading The Widow by the same author.

We all know the saying “Oh, what a tangled web we weave… when first we practice to deceive.” In Fiona Barton’s engrossing new thriller, The Child, that tangled web is spun around a single act. Like a stack of dominoes falling when just one is pushed over, it seems almost inevitable that when one string on that web is pulled, the whole construct is torn apart until a shocking secret is completely revealed.

Like most buried secrets, its discovery was always a question of when, not if. As a building is demolished, a workman stumbles across the skeleton of an infant covered by a large cement urn and left undisturbed for years. When London reporter Kate Waters sees the simple two-sentence write up about it in the Evening Standard, she is intrigued. Visiting the neighborhood and then chasing down the construction worker who first found the remains, she writes a larger article about the event, hoping to stir some memories and shed some light on the identity of the baby and why it was left to rot in such a location.

Emma Simmonds has been battling depression for decades, a result of a traumatic childhood experience which ended with her being thrown out of her home at just sixteen years of age. In the present, she has a good job, a loving husband and a cold but cordial relationship with her mother. But the past is a dark pit, a well of memories which into which she could easily fall and drown. When she sees the article about the infant dubbed the ‘Building Site Baby’, she finds herself once more heading towards that dark place.

Jude Massingham is annoyed by her daughter Emma’s melodramatic take on the past. Yes, bad things happened but Jude is all about the future. She’s just received a call from an old flame, an ex whom she never really got over and she doesn’t understand why Emma can’t share in her joy at their possible reunion. She grows increasingly frustrated as Emma’s trip down memory lane begins to throw shadows on her dreams for a lovely future.

Angela Irving has never gotten over the abduction of her infant daughter. Every new case of a missing child being discovered, every case of an unidentified infant body being found is cause for both elation and concern. It’s possible that she will finally reconnect with the child she still longs to hold but it is also possible the police will return with the nasty allegations they threw at her in the past. She desperately wants to know what happened to her precious daughter but she doesn’t want to stir up the hornet’s nest that was the previous investigation. Connecting with Kate Waters looks like a marvelous opportunity to find out all that is happening with the the Building Site Baby but can she really trust a reporter?

Four lives collide as Kate carefully follows a story that will take her to a surprising but deeply satisfying ending. I was intrigued from the first page by what was happening and how the case was unfolding. The tale is deliciously startling, with each twist and turn seemingly coming out of nowhere. Barton is a master storyteller who uses her pacing carefully, starting out slow and easing us into a fast paced conclusion that leaves the reader stunned. In fact, my only quibble with the book is that we start out at what feels like a crawl. This lasts for only a short time and didn’t bother me personally, but I know some fans require more explosive momentum from the start. Stick with it a tiny bit and I promise,you will find it well worth your while.

Each character in our little drama plays their role to perfection. Each of them are at times vulnerable, sympathetic or suspicious. Almost everything is colored in shades of gray, so that it is hard to make out who will wind up the villain of the piece and who the hero. While I enjoyed getting to know most of them, what made this book great for me was the return of Kate and Sparkes. Kate is perfect as a reporter, a combination of just right amount of social justice warrior and ruthless, career conscious woman. Sparkes is exactly how we expect a police officer of his rank and experience to be: curmudgeonly, smart, focused and caring. I like how he and Kate don’t have an easy relationship: They like each other but neither completely trusts the other, and this seems natural given their careers and their often conflicting goals. While this is the second book featuring this duo, it completely stands alone.

The Child is an onion of a mystery, with each layer a wondrous revelation. Fans of psychological thrillers featuring compelling female characters will NOT want to miss this book. Fans who enjoy a good intellectual mystery with some heart will be completely delighted with it. In fact if you like suspense at all, I strongly recommend it; this is likely to be one of the best of the year.

The Child by Fiona Barton is a deep chilling read. After reading The Widow, I found this one to be more exciting. As with the previous novel, the pacing starts out slow and then slightly builds with a fierce intensity. The plot hooked me. I was fascinated to find out who the baby was and how it got there, as well as why. Fiona Barton has a way with adding suspense to every page. The further I read, the more intrigued I was. The story was believable. Entertaining, well-written, and complicated. The main character, Kate will find out more than she planned to...overall, I enjoyed reading this latest novel. I recommend The Child to readers everywhere.

I read this all in a single day. I loved how the characters and their stories were all tangled together. I liked Emma, and Kate, but I didn't like Jude... I think she got what she deserved in the end. Thank you, Netgalley, for this arc.

3.5 stars--between liked and really liked.

This is my first Barton novel; I didn't realize it was a series--well, at least, Kate the reporter also appeared in Barton's first book, The Widow. It didn't decrease my enjoyment of this book, though, and I was never confused.

This is a fast read--at least it was for me, and I stayed up too late devouring it. The pace was very brisk, the characterization was good, and I was satisfied by the ending in a "yay justice is done!" kind of way.

I thought the mystery's solution was pretty apparent at about the 50% mark, and think it would have been very clearly apparent to the cops/the lab technicians as well, but I still rushed through the pages to find out what would happen next. If you like suspense novels, this is a good one.

I received this review copy from the publisher on NetGalley. Thanks for the opportunity to read and review; I appreciate it!

I absolutely adored Fiona Barton’s debut novel, The Widow, so I was all-too eager to get my little hands on this one when I heard about The Child. Of course, that’s the problem with not reading blindly, isn't it--with already being familiar with an author’s previous works: you go in with expectations, undoubtedly heightening your expectations on the author, and it doesn’t always pan out. When that happens, those reads seem to fall harder than if you’d never met their predecessors in the first place. Unfortunately, that’s what happened here.

Not too far into Fiona Barton’s sophomore novel, The Child, I realized that this one wasn’t nearly as clever as her debut, The Widow, and wasn’t nearly as captivating either. Read as a “rush job,” without the finesse and nuance of her previous novel. In a lot of ways, it reminded me of the follow-up to a blockbuster movie--you know, the ones where you can tell the studio was just rushing to churn the next one out to capitalize on the fanfare of the last one.

Have you ever read a novel and just knew you could pick out the characters on the street if you saw them? Their mannerisms are so real, their dialogue so witty, so poignant, so enthralling, that you recall a whole slew of their quotes from memory. These characters come alive on the page and delight you, make you want to be them—or at least kidnap them and keep them as your new bestie. Well, you won’t find that here, people. These characters didn’t saunter around, exuding their very essence across the page like in the previous novel.

Though, to be fair, it’s not all cons in this one. One of the better aspects of this novel is that Barton uses the format of short chapters to swiftly draw her reader in and keep them turning pages. It’s a style that I now recognize her for. That technique makes the read seem shorter, faster, and is a true hallmark of the modern-day thriller, which was once again used brilliantly here. Well, to an extent. Of all things, The Child was chalked full of filler. I could almost palpably feel myself ripping at the cotton-like filler to get down to the meat, the core of the novel. Some of the chapters were completely useless to the plot as a whole and slowed the read down to a near-screeching halt, contradictory to the goals of the short chapters, placing The Child very squarely into the “cozy thriller” category and loosening the tauntness that readers look for in a good mystery thriller.

All I needed for complete this novel was a cuppa Earl Grey and a biscuit. For some, this’ll work brilliantly, but I can see the flatly written characters turning off character piece buffs, while the added family drama will turn off mystery thrill seekers, stripping away its well-roundedness and landing this one in a category for a very specific kind of reader. It’s not that the characters here were unlikeable, more like they were just silly. Crying at the slightest stimulus. Sighing and huffing and wedge-driving over men who, for the majority of the read, weren’t much more than cliché sketches of cheaters and adulterers themselves. There were moments where I actually imagined them fawning and fanning themselves at the thought of these men, swooning in their own misery, and that made the read feel long, like I was trudging through used Kleenex the entire time.

Let’s go ahead and address this here, shall we?

There’s so much chatter in the book world about (female) characters who are unlikeable for being shallow or crass—The Girl on the Train immediately comes to mind—but these characters in The Child were equally unlikeable for a completely different reason: because they were so spineless, weak and lacking of any motivation that I could get behind for the vast majority of the novel. (view spoiler) There were a lot of tears in this book, even moments of rushing out of a grocery store, abandoning their grocery cart, because the noise was too unbearable. These characters all needed a swift kick in the ass if you ask me.

Hmm, and the ending. I won’t give anything away, but I will definitely say that I’m not sure how I feel about it. It could’ve been a phenomenal ending, but it was executed poorly and via unlikeable characters, so, in the end, it just felt like a hastily done soap opera ending. There were loads of other sections that could have been scrapped in favor of perfecting the ending, believe me—and the fact that the ending was held up by sappy, weak-willed characters just ruined it, like spilling liquid on a watercolor painting. (view spoiler) all in all, landed The Child with a average score of 3 stars ***

A small baby's remains are found at a building construction site. One woman thinks this may be the story to boost her career, another thinks it is the baby stolen from her hospital room just after she gave birth and another knows it's her baby and that her secrets are about to come out. Fiona Barton does a great job of creating well-developed characters both good and bad and giving you the pieces of their intertwined puzzle a little at a time until the answers become clear. I felt as if every layer that was revealed was a tick of a time bomb leading to the explosive finale. I found it very hard to put this book down and very frustrating when I was forced to. I highly recommend this book!

While I enjoyed this one, it lacked that exciting, fast-paced aspect I associate with most thrillers. I actually enjoyed Barton's debut novel THE WIDOW on audiobook far more than this one. The ending was surprisingly upbeat, given that it was a thriller. Felt a bit too wrapped up and idealistic, however happy I was for Emma that she found a loving family at last.

The story for me was great but I found it to progress to slowly. Also following the characters was a bit confusing. I didn't find there was any real twists for me that kept me wanting to read and it was disappointing that I had the ending figured out before I was halfway through the book.

Emma, Angela, Jude and Kate. An infant's skeleton is found as an old house is demolished. It seems like it has been buried for many years, maybe decades. All these women take notice when it becomes newspaper article.

Kate is a journalist. She decides to do a full-length article with follow up ... who does this infant belong to? How long has she been there? Why and how did it come to be buried?

Angela's newborn daughter was stolen from her hospital room 28 years ago and never found. She's never recovered the trauma and it has affected her entire life. Is this her baby?

Emma has secrets that have never seen the light of day. Why is this child affecting her so much? Jude is her mother. Jude threw Emma out of their house when she was just 16 years old. Jude's boyfriend was her priority .... not her daughter. Emma has tried to share her secret, but Jude would not listen.

Kate becomes involved with all of them not only because of a story, but because she genuinely cares. And as she becomes enmeshed in their lives, she finds herself burdened by stories that maybe she shouldn't share with the world.

Having read THE WIDOW by this author, I was eager to see if this one would be as good. It definitely is! It was a slow start though ... each chapter written by a different woman. The book bounces back and forth in their memories from the things happening today to what happened many years ago.

All of the characters are cleverly written. It's so easy to get wrapped up in their lives. The secondary characters -- husbands, police, other newspeople -- are all as credible and add a lot of interest to the story premise.

There are twists and turns along the way, but I did not expect the most surprising twist at the end of the book. Very engaging and riveting book. This is an author to watch.

Many thanks to the author / Berkley Publishing Group / Netgalley for the digital copy of THE CHILD. Opinions expressed here are unbiased and entirely my own.

I received an advanced copy of The Child, Fiona Barton’s upcoming book, scheduled to release on June 27. I read and (mostly) enjoyed her first novel, The Widow, so I was excited to dig into this and was also happy to learn that my favorite character from that story, Kate Waters, would reappear in the new book. I am sensing a slight change in the trend from domestic thrillers that entertain but also carry a low level thread of hyper misogyny to more plot and character driven stories and I for one couldn’t be happier. The Widow, which overall I did appreciate even though I gave it a grumpy lukewarm review, spent too much time in the evil man / helpless woman trope for my liking, but I’m happy to say that The Child breaks that mold and really showcases Barton’s story skills. The plotting and intricacies were admirable and even though I figured out the ending sorta (because I’m a genius) it didn’t spoil anything for me.


The Child focuses on four different women, Angela, Kate, Emma and Jude, with alternating POV. At the start, an old housing complex in London is being torn down when a workman finds the remains of an infant who has been buried for years. Kate, our intrepid reporter, now amusingly burdened with a millennial trainee and the pressures of a click-bait economy, sets out to find some answers. The search for a possible answer immediately starts with Angela, whose baby was stolen from the hospital hours after being born. Though this was decades ago, and Angela and her husband have two other children, the book somehow expects her to have gotten over this tragedy as though that is something that can actually be done. Angela is very eager, after all this time, to finally understand what happened to her child and to grieve properly.


As Kate and the police research the connections between Angela’s baby and the building site remains, she is drawn into the lives of the people who once lived in these houses, including Emma and her mother Jude, and starts to uncover more secrets. The story is slow moving to start, though it isn’t boring at all, just a quieter book than usual. I read this at the same time as I listened to Into the Water, which I wouldn’t recommend doing – but pretty sure I’m the only weirdo who has 2-3 books going at all times. The stories are similar in tone, but The Child is simpler (this is not a criticism – Into the Water is crazy convoluted) and easier to follow and really starts running about a quarter of the way into it.


Big thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for giving me an opportunity to read this book prior to publication.

The Child – Grade B+

...4+ Stars.

...Really enjoyed my first Fiona Barton novel.....and Oh Boy!....It's a series.

...THE CHILD is told from four different perspectives with short chapters that flow smoothly making for a very quick and engrossing read.....and don't worry about keeping track of the players as you will soon find it unnecessary.

...Kate Waters is a journalist who knows her stuff.....and has a conscience. On the lookout for a newsworthy story for The Daily Post, a disturbing find of a tiny skeleton grabs Kate's attention and leads her on an investigative journey exposing multiple buried secrets.....with one biggie I did NOT see coming.

...THE CHILD is one fine mystery with some nasty and sleazy character types and much more to the storyline than meets the eye! Look forward to reading THE WIDOW!

Many thanks to NetGalley and Berkley Publishing Group for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

4 stars

A wonderful mystery with a suprising plot twist!

The Child is told through multiple points of view, which worked well in this book. The plot was constantly moving and there never felt like there was a lull in action. Every character was unique and easily recognizable. I didn't see the ending coming at all which I loved! This is this first book I've read by Fiona Barton but I plan to go back and read The Widow.

I think I found Barton's first book, The Widow, more compelling than this one because at the beginning it seems you know who the bad person is whereas in The Widow you kept reading to find out. It's never fun if you think you know who did it. But I did enjoy the end and the tying together character lines.

I had previously enjoyed “The Widow” by Fiona Barton and was looking forward to “The Child”. At first the story reminded me a bit of a novel I read a few years ago called “Daughter of Ashes” by Marcia Talley which was also about the skeleton of a baby found in an old building. The premise of the novel isn’t a new one but Ms. Barton made it a very good mystery by the quality of her character development. As we know from the blurb, a skeleton is found while demolishing a collection of row houses in an old subdivision to make way for new development. The mystery therefore is who the baby is and why she was buried in a home garden. What is the story about the mother and is there anyone left in the old neighborhood who knows what may have happened?

The book is told from three points of view, three very different women. Emma is a women who we know is hiding a secret from the start. She had a very rocky start in life, living with her mother Jude, who was very self involved and didn’t spend very much time fostering a loving relationship with Emma. As Emma got older Jude became obsessed with a boyfriend named Will whom she had live with her and Emma for a number of years. We know that Emma didn’t like this man but why? We also know that Jude made Emma leave home at the young age of 16, presumably because she couldn’t abide her personality, changes in behavior, etc. There was a strong wedge between Emma and Jude and they have just recently begin to speak to each other. Emma had lived in the area where the skeletal remains were found.

Angela is a mother of two children who we learn experienced an extremely traumatic event with the abduction of another child that she gave birth to and was taken from the hospital room while she slipped out for a shower. Even though the abduction occurred almost two decades ago she has, of course, never gotten over it. She has a supportive husband and two grown children but the sorrow of her missing child is still overwhelming to her. She becomes convinced that the skeleton found is that of her missing Alice. But she has no connection to the area where the baby was found???? Will the forensics team be able to link her to the remains?

Kate is a go getter reporter who sees a story behind the small report when the skeletal remains are found. She knows that there has to be a strong story behind this and only has to convince her editor to let her run with her ideas. She and a young intern do everything that they can to uncover the truth. She speaks to a woman who still lives in the area and gets some clues from her. She turns to a now retired detective to help her uncover some records so that she can continue her investigation. I really enjoyed this character. She was very believable and her talents were readily evident, along with her caring personality.

So in rounding up my feelings I did enjoy this story based on the strong characters. I figured out the mystery of the identity of the remains quite early but there was a great twist at the end regarding two of the characters. It had a great ending which is what bumped my star rating from a 3 to a 4.

I will continue to read and recommend any novel by Ms. Barton and would recommend this to anyone who loves mysteries and strong characters. I enjoy novels told from multiple points of view and the style worked perfectly in this book. Some really great writing here.

I received an ARC of this novel from the publisher and NetGalley, thank you.

Will also post to Amazon upon publication.

I have mixed feelings about this one. I didn't realize it was part of a series before I started it, and although it is a stand alone story I find that I am not that big a fan of the main character Kate.

Emma on the other hand, was captivating. I felt a lot of sympathy for her.

Emma is a woman haunted by her past. She suffers bouts of anxiety and depression. Her husband knows this, accepts this, but does not know or pursue the reasons for it. He does know that she has a very strained relationship with her mother Jude, and that for many years they did not speak to each other. He doesn't know why. For the longest time in Emma's childhood it was just her and Jude, until she was sent away. Some women will do absolutely anything for their children, but not Jude. Jude is one of those women who just can't be without a man, no matter what. I loved hating Jude.
Then there is Angela and Nick, who decades ago, when their marriage was already in a turbulent state, lost a child. Their newborn baby Alice was whisked away out of Angela's hospital room, never to be seen again. The case has gone cold but not a day has gone by that Angela has not thought of her baby. My heart just ached for her.

When Angela hears that a tiny skeleton was unearthed at a construction site she is sure that it is her Alice.

Of course there is far more to this story as journalist Kate uncovers.

Now as spellbound as I was by Emma, I was just so bored with Kate. It was all I could do not to skip past those parts about her, and her son, and her annoying new trainee. Thankfully those parts were brief. Whenever the story focused on Kate it felt kind of like watching your favorite soap opera and you can't wait for it to get back to the characters with the more exciting parts and quit interrupting the storyline with the bits about people you aren't interested in.