My first by this author but it won't be my last. This book kept my turning pages. It was engaging, well written and a great read.

A copy of this novel was given in exchange for an honest review.

This novel is somewhat short and sweet. I would highly recommend it for people who don’t have a lot of time or brain capacity for reading lengthy, complicated novels. This novel follows Maggie after she wakes up from a coma and finds out that her daughter died in an accident that she had a hand in. And her husband? Nowhere to be found.

This novel is one of my most favourite thrillers I’ve read lately because of all the twists and turns. It didn’t matter quite how many times I tried to guess what was going to happen next, I never got it right. Ellwood is a fantastic writer with a creative imagination that really brings Maggie’s troubles to life. I wouldn’t recommend this novel to people who haven’t delved into the world of thriller before because it might set the bar high.

Great read, one of those books that draws you in and keeps you entertained. Twists and turns, and some good red herrings.
Will recommend, thanks for allowing me to read and review.

In this story, The Day of the Accident, Nuala Ellwood reveals how the accidental death of Maggie's child changes her life forever. It's about Maggie trying to pick up the pieces to put her life back together, but sadly some of the pieces are missing and the puzzle may never be complete.

This is a psychological thriller that made me yearn for Maggie to get some peace, but she seems quite emotionally unstable, understandably so considering what she's been through. Yet, beneath any psychological issues she may be dealing with her, it doesn't change the fact that on top of losing her daughter, her husband has gone mysteriously missing, and she's now getting messages from her dead daughter. Impossible, but true.

For me this started off fast and then dragged a little in the middle. I really love Nuala Ellwood's writing, so I was a little disappointing by this, however, the pace did pick up and the twist at the end is definitely an eye-opener and was not what I expected at all!

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. There were plenty of twists and turns along the way, but each nugget of information made sense once it was revealed. I think I felt every emotion possible whilst reading it. I would recommend this book to my family and friends, although I would warn them not to read it if they want to go to sleep; I read through the night to finish it.

Day of the Accident is a disturbing psychological thriller. A young girl drowns and her mother's life falls apart. This is a competent read but I was left feeling dissatisfied with the characters and the ending.

A quite compelling read as to have barely survived a near-drowning is horrific enough without waking to such a discovery as that experienced by Maggie, the main character. Naturally the reader wants Maggie to recover but is made to wonder about the dark event in her past. Is she really as evil as she believes and could she be responsible for such a tragic outcome at the accident? Dependent upon those around her in her first weeks of recovery she must wait for her memory to return, if at all, to provide the answers.
The explanations are provided towards the end and, although I had my suspicions about the outcome, this was a satisfying conclusion to a recommended read.

Thank you to NetGalley and Penguin Random House for this copy in exchange for an honest review.

I have a slightly uneasy relationship with suspense fiction, more so with romantic suspense, but also with the regular variety. The blurb for this book intrigued me enough, however, that I requested a copy via Net Galley without anything in the way of further investigation. And to begin with, it appeared that I’d been correct in my assumption that this was a mystery in which the protagonist attempts to piece together the gaps in their memory and find out what really happened to them and to the other accident victims.

Maggie wakes from a coma with no recollection of the time leading up to the accident that left her unconscious and her young daughter drowned in a river. Nothing the police or hospital staff can tell her makes any sense. Her daughter was locked in Maggie’s car when it rolled down the slope into the water, and Maggie sustained her injuries while attempting a rescue. Maggie’s daughter was terrified of being left in the car and would have hysterics if the locks were set, so why would Maggie have subjected her to that fear – and how did the car come to roll down the slope when overprotective Maggie was so conscientious about checking the handbrake? Not only that, Maggie cannot imagine what took her to that spot in the first place. The only possible destination nearby is a pub she had visited once and disliked enough not to plan a return visit.

The next shocks for Maggie come when she finds out that her husband walked out of the hospital following their daughter’s funeral and gave up the lease on the house Maggie thought they owned together. With nowhere to go back to on her release from hospital, and with no friends to fall back on due to her extreme closeness – as she thought – to her husband and daughter, Maggie is forced to rely on Social Services to set her up with temporary accommodation – and with a carer to visit and ensure she takes the correct medication for her remaining injuries.

As Maggie tries to remember more of what happened in the days leading up to the accident, and hunts for clues as to where her husband went and what he did with her possessions, she begins to wonder how many of these recent events are tied to mistakes she made as a teenager. In attempting to make contact with the remaining people from that time – her ex-boyfriend’s parents – and to jog her memory by revisiting the house where she lived both as a child and as a married woman and mother, Maggie is befriended by the current tenant at the house, a young doctor who shows great interest in Maggie’s memory issues and with the issues from her past that have prevented her from forming many stable relationships as an adult.

So far, so good, but then it all started to go wrong as Maggie inexplicably found herself beset by enemies and began to receive letters which she believed were from her supposedly dead daughter. The letters are interspersed with the main narrative throughout the story and are a bleak tale of child deprivation that don’t really fit the timeline of either Maggie’s daughter’s possible post-accident story or with any part of Maggie’s childhood when the events of that are finally revealed to readers. The identity of the true villains of the piece came as a shock, but it also felt to me that they had been turned into caricatures of individuals with their supposed back stories. The final showdown between Maggie and those she had supposedly harmed in the past, and who now wanted to get their revenge, didn’t feel at all real to me.

All in all, a story of bleak events happening to not particularly nice people. Not my cup of tea at all.

The Day of the Accident is the first Nuala Ellwood book I’ve read, and it certainly won’t be the last. There is an underlying uneasiness to this novel that for me made it what it is, and I’m not sure I’d have enjoyed it as much without it.

Margaret (Maggie) wakes up after a long period in a coma to find out that her daughter is dead and her husband has left her. Even those of the most stable mind would undoubtedly struggle if presented with this information, but Maggie has also suffered before from mental health issues.

After much pleading, Maggie learns from the hospital staff caring for her, that her daughter Elspeth died after the car Maggie had been driving plunged into the river. She remembers nothing of this, though her scarred hands and nail beds suggest that she tried very hard to save her daughter.

So why then are the police asking questions that Maggie doesn’t know the answer to and why do they seem to be regarding her with suspicion when she tells them that she is unable to remember anything? Do they know something she doesn’t.

Day Of the Accident is at times an unsettling read, with some quite unsavoury characters. But that for me only made it more intriguing, and I had to second guess where it was going on a number of occasions.

I don’t want to say too much more for fear of giving anything away, so you must discover this one for yourself.

I really enjoyed Nuala Ellwood's 2016 debut, My Sister's Bones, so I jumped at the chance of reading Day of the Accident, her second novel. I found this one so compelling that I read it (400 pages) in the space of a day which is quite unusual for me. It's a book that I couldn't put down. It's so easy to read and yet so full of depth.

Maggie Allan is in a coma when the book begins, and she's just starting to show signs of coming out of it. But the news that awaits her is the worst she can imagine. Her ten year old daughter, Elspeth, is dead. She drowned when the car she was in, Maggie's car, plunged into the water. Maggie tried desperately to save her but couldn't and now she can't remember anything about what happened that day or why she was by the river at all.

Of course, the memory loss storyline has been done many times before but it works so well in providing a protagonist with a mystery to solve and that's what happens in Day of the Accident. Maggie is absolutely determined to find out why her daughter is dead. To top it all, her husband, Sean, is now missing. Why? Nobody knows.

As I say, I absolutely raced through this book. It's addictive reading. Maggie is on a bit of a collision course, wandering into situations that may or may not be dangerous, may or may not trigger a memory, may or may not help. There are people around her whom she trusts but is she right to do so?

I thought to myself as I hurtled towards the end of the book that I really didn't know what was going to happen. I had a slight inkling but Ellwood does an excellent job of building up to the surprises. Like many psychological thrillers, it's slightly far-fetched but also not impossible. If you read the news you know that strange things happen every day.

Day of the Accident is gripping and thrilling, intriguing and full of suspense. I loved it.

This is essentially a great story which is dark and disturbing, looking at relationships. The ending blew my mind as it was not expected at all. There are many twists and turns which kept me changing my mind as to what was going to happen at the end.
The characters are well described and the pace of the book is excellent.

Maggie wakes up to find that she has been in a terrible accident. The doctor's weren't sure that she would survive. She learns that her young daughter was killed in the accident, and her husband has disappeared. Maggie is left alone, with nowhere to live, no possessions, and the worst part is she remembers nothing about the day of the accident. She doesn't know why she and her daughter Elspeth were in the car that night or where they were going. But she knows she must find out; it's all she cares about now. It's all she has left.

This is a very tense book. The story is really exciting because Maggie doesn't know what is going on, so neither do you. The story unravels for her and you feel every emotion that passes through her. You learn about her dark past as the story goes on, and when all is revealed it doesn't disappoint. Everything that happens just adds to the hype and tension, and I was absolutely gripped all the way through. The ending is a fantastic climax and I was left wowed and on a high at the end.

The characters are great, especially Maggie who is a very complex and damaged lady. You really feel for everything that has happened to her and I thought she was a really interesting protagonist. There were some other good characters too, and they all fit their parts in the story very well. The writing was emotional and intense, and flowed very smoothly. The progression of the story seemed very natural.

Overall I thoroughly enjoyed this book, it's a true thriller from beginning to end. Highly recommended.

This book was amazing, so gripping, so perfectly put together and I loved every second of it!

Maggie wakes up in hospital after being in a coma absolutely terrified because she can’t remember a thing. She’s been in an accident, her daughter died and her husband left her. She’s know idea how any of this happened but she’s going to try her hardest to work it out.

It’s written so well that you feel everything Maggie is feeling, it’s hard to read because you so want everything to be okay but you just don’t know if it will be, but that’s also what made me so addicted to it. I did not want to stop reading!

No spoilers but another thing that I adored was how much it plays with your head, I didn’t know what was real and what wasn’t half the time. You couldn’t trust anyone.
I kinda caught on to the end about two thirds in, but I didn’t expect as much as we got at all, it’s was so twisty and shocking and just brilliant!!

Definitely recommend to any thriller lover!

Thank you to netgalley, the author and the publisher for this arc copy to review

This was a good book, I like the premise.
The writing was good and the characters were engaging.
I found that I read this quickly.

In the beginning of this book I was concerned that I could not continue as the sentences were very short, and the choppiness of this writing style immediately irritated me; however I am glad I did not stop as I ultimately enjoyed it. After a while reading this book the is author's writing style took on a good flow and the choppiness wasn't even noticeable (I think I just struggled transitioning from one author's writing style to the next).
From the blurb I was very intrigued and once I had started the story the started quickly and was immediately gripping. I found it really intriguing to be finding out what had happened along with our main character and I felt I connected with her and understood her frustration in everything that was happening; it was certainly frustrating to be finding out the story in small sections, and not even knowing how to interpret the small snippets we were getting of the day of the accident.
This book was consistently gripping and kept me wanting more throughout and as the story escalated I just could not put it down; however, ultimately I think the big reveal could have been preluded better.

The book is superbly written, paced and constructed by an author who knows how to grip a curious reader and never let them go. As Rosamund Lupton is quoted on the cover: 'I read it in one sitting'. I wasn't quite able to do that but after two days of living with it in my head, I found I had to get to the end on the third day just to see if all my mental musings were proved correct.

At the time of writing, this book is ranked number 1 in Gothic Romance. I'd say it deserves a far broader category in which to be number one. This novel encapsulates motherhood and all that means, loss, dependency, values and foolish pride, love and all it makes us do, good and bad. In fact, it's one of the best fictionalised accounts of a mother's love I have read.

Before this book, I'm not sure I really understood reviews which stated a 4.5 star read. Why the half a star? And now I do...

...for I cannot fault the prose, the imaginative yet very possible chain of events (fact stranger than fiction would probably have an even more unbelievable denouement), the characters all ring true and come alive with ease, especially Maggie. Poor, poor Maggie and everything life threw at her. There wasn't a dud note throughout and the twists and turns came at a steady pace, sometimes frustratingly but honestly so.

The missing half a star is not for anything Nuala Ellwood created. It is more a gut feeling, very personal and completely subjective, which is why the creative arts are so beloved and yet so divisive (and overlooked in schools). You cannot ever quite quantify their value but life would be infinitely duller and less colourful without them. How do you put a judgement on something which speaks to your soul, makes you laugh or cry and care about unreal or abstract ideas.

Thus, The Day of the Accident gets a very solid 4.5 stars as I'm very pleased I read it and spent time with these characters.

3.5 stars

Well I did a 360 degree turnaround on my opinion of this book.

I started off disliking it, as it's written in the present tense and I find that annoying to read. The only reason that I continued is that I had really enjoyed the author's previous book, so I wanted to give this one every chance.

Lucky I did!

I ended up loving the plot. I had ZERO idea what was actually going on, and I was totally baffled by the events. In a great way, as it meant I couldn't put the book down. The plot and the characters demanded my full attention, and I fully got over my struggle with the present tense. I think I was reading so fast towards the end, that I couldn't even tell you what tense it was in!

I don't even know where to start...

This is quite simply my favourite psychological thriller that I have read in a while. I did not want to put it down at any point and kept convincing myself that I had time to squeeze one more chapter in.

It is gripping, terrifying, exciting and heartbreaking all at once and a fantastic 5* read.

Day of the Accident is Nuala Ellwood's second novel, and after loving My Sister's Bones I was apprehensive about delving into this in case it was suffering from a bad case of second book syndrome; I needn't have worried though as this is even better than her first book. The whole plot concept revolves around the consequences of a car accident in which Maggie starts to suffer from amnesia and can't seem to tell perception from reality anymore; this makes for a thrilling and intensely absorbing tale.

It's well written, evocative and, at times, rather poignant. It's packed with surprises some I predicted, others I didn't. Full of melancholy and tragic circumstances, this is quite a depressing read. You are drawn in from the opening pages and spat out at the end as a breathless mess. It's not till nearer the conclusion that we see the different strands of the plot come together and merge into one; it's quite a eureka moment. This is a satisfying and totally gripping page-turner in which there are copious secrets and lies and plenty of duplicities.

Many thanks to Penguin for an ARC.

Day of the Accident is the first book by Nuala Ellwood that I have read and it is an excellent thrilling with a brilliant twist at the end that I didn't see coming.

The story is told at a pace and I found very engrossing.

Thoroughly recommended