Cover Image: Day of the Accident

Day of the Accident

Pub Date:   |   Archive Date:

Member Reviews

Interesting engaging plot. You really don’t know what’s going on and you are desperate to find out. You are thrown a few curve balls and I kept changing my mind about what had happened but none of my many scenarios proved right!

Was this review helpful?

Day of The Accident was a fast paced, gripping read that was incredibly hard to put down.

The story is very well written and I felt intrigued from the start by the mysterious circumstances surrounding the day of the accident. I found I had to keep reading as I had to find out the truth.

Maggie was an interesting main character that I kept changing my opinion on. On one hand I did feel very sorry for her as one of my kids going missing is my worst nightmare. Her fear and concern for them was almost palpable at times which made for quite emotional reading. However I did want to shake her sometimes as I felt she needed to get a grip and pull herself together to help find her daughter.

This book was very addictive with lots of twists that keep the reader firmly on their toes. Just when I thought I’d figured everything out something would happen and I’d be back at the beginning trying to make sense of everything. This ensured that the book is a fast read as it’s almost impossible to put down. I manage to read this over the course of two days reading late into the night to read a few more pages!

I’m always a bit dubious when a book is marketed as having a twist that you won’t see coming, but in this case it was true as it took me completely by surprise! The author clearly explains the reasons behind everyone’s behaviour which was very interesting and was a fitting end for a fantastic book.

This is the author’s second book and I’m very excited to read more from her in the future. This would make a great book club book as I think you’d want to discuss what happens and the big twist at the end.

Huge thanks to Georgina Taylor for inviting me onto the blog tour and for my copy of this book which I received in exchange for an honest review. If you like fast paced, gripping thrillers then you’ll love this book!

Was this review helpful?

I received a copy of this book in return for my independent honest review. Thank you.
I hadn't read anything by this author going into this and this certainly won't be my last read.
I have read a few books recently with the trope of someone waking up in intensive care and something strange is going on,so I wasn't expecting anything new. However I was very pleasantly surprised. What was fantastic about this was the emotional intensity which I totally understood as a mother myself and the way the writing style made me feel the pain. Maggie comes round after a car accident to be told her young daughter died.
Her husband has gone missing too.
This is a well paced plot,the writing style natural and emotional and like Maggie you are eager to get to the truth.
This is definitely a book that you don't want to put down. The emotional connection for me is what merits the 5* the plot 4*. I totally recommend it for thriller lovers everywhere.

Was this review helpful?

Gripping, chilling and very well written, this is a great example of psychological suspense/domestic noir. Very dark, very absorbing.

Was this review helpful?

This was great a thriller that you will never guess the end of the plot just goes on with twists and turns everywhere. Waking up from a coma is bad enough but then to be told your husband sold your house and disappeared the day they buried your daughter. What is true how can she believe its true when she does not feel that its true. Brilliant story by Nuala Ellwood.

Was this review helpful?

Thank you for the opportunity to read this book and I really enjoyed it. Kept me engaged and a real page Turner. Loved it and would recommend it to thriller fans

Was this review helpful?

I read an awful lot of psychological thrillers. It's my go-to comfort read. (No, that isn't odd) I especially love a missing memory thriller, where you find out what happened as the protagonist does. when they wake up from a coma without a scooby-doo what's been going on. Actually, my ultimate favourite is when the main character wakes up and doesn't even know who they are, or remember themselves as being someone else.

Anyway, my weird plot preferences aside, I should have enjoyed this book. It has everything I like in a lost-memory psychological thriller. It's well written and has all the right ingredients for a nail biting read. However, there are a few things that made this lacklustre. The pacing was too slow... we spend a lot of time going over the same questions; why has the husband left, who else was there that night, why does she feel like her daughter is still alive? To the point that it became somewhat repetitive. This lack of 'oomph' to the story actually made me want to skim pages (Something I never do) in the hope of some actual action.

Also, some of the plot was a bit far-fetched. There are some coincidences that I just couldn't swallow. Maggie, the main character, spends most of the book being a bit wet and sorry for herself (as you might expect under the circumstances!)and then suddenly in the last chapter finds all this courage and cool-headedness from somewhere, which seemed really out of character.

This is a solid psychological thriller, but it didn't surprise or move me in anyway and I wont remember it in a week's time. Perhaps I've read too much of this genre and need to take a break, but I'm sure there must still be some surprises to be had!

Was this review helpful?

Day of The Accident by Nuala Ellwood as a thoroughly exhilarating and thrilling read. I could not stop from reading it for one second, and it was so full of mystery and tension.

I loved the plot of the story. The blurb drew me in instantly, and when I was reading the story, I was eager for more. I was always second-guessing how it would go, and I was just completely swept away by it. To say that this novel was addictive is an understatement.

I also loved how the author also told the story in epistolary form. This completely changed the story for me. It led me to believe one path where it was another one completely. It gave the story more edge, and I just loved it!

And as for that ending, wow! It completely blew me away. From how the prologue started, I had for sure figure out how it would go, and it was like that throughout, but the ending blew that to smithereens. It completely wowed me! It was not something I was expecting at all.

Day of The Accident is one of the best thrillers I've read in 2019. It had its grasp on me from the very beginning, and had me gasping from shock at the very ending. A very entertaining and thrilling read. AMAZING!!

Was this review helpful?

would like to thank netgalley and the publisher for letting me read this book

a disturbing read

a woman wakes up from a coma and finds out her husband has gone and her daughter is dead..drowned in the car she had been driving

this is the story of how she pieced her life back together..the struggles and the nightmare scenaries she goes through

it starts off really well but by the time i got to the last few chapters it had taken on a very surreal ending, one that became a bit predicable and not so believable...

Was this review helpful?

This is a brilliant book which had me hooked from the first few pages.
Maggie wakes up in hospital to discover that her daughter is dead and her husband has left her.
Social services help her find a place to live to get her back on her feet but Maggie is really struggling to understand how her daughter died.
The night of the accident is a blank at first then Maggie gets a few flashbacks.
Julia, a local GP offers her help and soon her panic attacks are under control.
This book delves into Maggie’s past and the true story of what happened on the day of the accident is slowly revealed.
This book has lots of twists and turns and just when you think you’ve worked out what happened, it’s turned completely on it’s head.
I loved this book and look forward to reading more of Nuala’s books.
Thanks to Penguin and NetGalley for the opportunity to read this book.

Was this review helpful?

Oh My: this book was just so good.
I was hooked and invested from the very instance I started this journey and what a ride this was.
The basic premise here: Maggie wakes up from a coma after an accident that has left her daughter dead.
The car slipped into the river after the handbrake wasn't engaged properly and despite Maggies best efforts Elspeth drowns and is pronounced dead at the scene.
When Maggie eventually gains consciousness her daughter's funeral has past and her husband is missing.
To further confound events their marital home has been sold seven years precious and their joint bank account has been cleared.
Maggie is alone adrift without an anchor and she has no idea where her husband has disappeared off to, she is also suffering from amnesia and can't remember what actually happened the day of that terrible accident.
So there's a lot going on here: So many strands of the narrative waiting patiently until eventually, a picture starts to emerge where all pieces of the puzzle connect.
The flashbacks of Maggies returning memories like a trail of breadcrumbs marking the forward path.
A deepening mystery in regards to Sean and his secrets and Maggie: what is she hiding from, what dark secret from her past is infecting her present.
I also felt such a sense of sympathy at poor Maggie's confusion and current bewilderment at her present situation: not only has she lost Elspeth but her life has imploded so dramatically leaving her essentially alone.
But the bit I liked most of all about this was that child dialogue and it's utter poignancy.
It was like a beacon of hope that eventually was quashed by the realism and disappointment of life.
That voice for me resounded so loudly through "Day of the Accident" essentially stealing the whole show.
So this was psychological suspense at its finest a gripping page-turner that I read in one sitting.
I actually thought I had worked this one out and though I had guessed some I was still blown away by that finale.
This one is a definite thumbs up from me it was such an amazing read.
I voluntary reviewed a copy of Day of the Accident.
All opinions expressed are entirely my own.

Was this review helpful?

I was surprised how quickly I was getting through this at first. I was intrigued to where the story was going. So many options for the final twist/reveal.
As I carried on reading I had a few theories. Based on Sean, the daughter and even Ben. However I was completely wrong. Even though I've read books with similar twists before I didn't even think of it.
Although I enjoyed this I struggled to want to pick it back up. It felt like a much longer read the more I was reading it. But that could of been my mood.

Was this review helpful?

I loved this book after initially thinking it was not my usual read. The story starts with Maggie waking from a coma and discovering her young daughter is dead after drowning in the car that she was driving. Her husband has dissapeared, their house has been sold and Maggie is left bewildered and having to start again. What follows is the story of her putting the pieces together of what happened on that fateful day, as well as snippets of information that all was not well in her childhood.
The final twist was a tiny bit expected but a great ending to a great book.
Thoroughly enjoyed this one, thanks for allowing me to read

Was this review helpful?

This book is packed full of twists and turn which refreshingly I didn’t always see coming! A fantastic first read of mind by Nuala.

Was this review helpful?

Day of the Accident will leave you breathless. I was in a bit of a book slump prior to reading this but this definitely brought me out of it. I didn’t see the twists coming despite reading many books from this genre recently.

There were several times I thought I had everything all figured out, but I was wrong.

The protagonist, Maggie wakes after being in a coma for ten weeks following a car accident which killed her ten-year-old daughter. When Maggie wakes up she has no memory of the day of the accident or of what happened to her daughter.

“Someone is missing. Someone should be here…The name is in my head but it won’t form on my lips. The most important name. The most important person in my life and I can’t get it out.”

Maggie can’t understand why she left Elspeth in the car let alone why it was locked.

“I can’t accept what they are telling me. I would know if she were dead. I would feel it in my bones. There would be a sense of finality, a full stop. No, they are wrong Elspeth got out of the car. She wandered off and now she is out there somewhere, lost and afraid. I can feel it.”

To top it all of her husband, Sean disappeared six weeks ago, cleared out the bank account and got rid of their house so she has no home, no family and no possessions.

How can she begin to find out what happened when she has no place to start from?

The letters within the book are a stroke of genius but one I can’t talk about without revealing spoilers.

Day of the Accident is an enthralling read and the best one of its kind I have read for a while. I read it all in one day, she is a very talented writer. Expect the unexpected.

Was this review helpful?

Maggie wakes up from a coma to discover that her daughter Elspeth is dead and her husband Sean has disappeared, nobody has seen him since their daughter's funeral. All they can tell Maggie is that she had been involved in an accident where her car had ended up in the river with her daughter locked inside, she had tried everything she could to save her but her attempts were futile and Elspeth drowned. The events that follow make Maggie think there is more to what happened on the day of the accident and she is convinced Elspeth may still be alive, so she sets out to uncover the truth.

This book is packed with twists and engulfed me from the first page, just when I thought I'd got all the answers the author throws in another curve ball that set me right back to the beginning again. The story is told by Maggie but every couple of chapters there is a letter from a child to her mummy, I had a solid theory who this child was, how wrong I was, a bit further on I came up with another possibility but no, wrong again. When it was eventually revealed I was left reeling, very unexpected. This book totally absorbed me and I read it in a day, I would highly recommend and look forward to reading more of this author's work.

I'd like to thank Penguin Books and Netgalley for the approval and will post my review on Amazon and Goodreads.

Was this review helpful?

Maggie's world was torn alert when she wakes up from a coma to be told that her daughter Elspeth is dead. She had drowned in the car that Maggie had been driving, plunged into the river. Maggie has no memory of the accident. When Maggie asks where her husband Sean is, she is told by the police that he has disappeared. He went missing on the day of Elspeth's funeral.

Maggie has so many unanswered questions from how the accident happened to where her husband had disappeared to and everything in between. You can't help feeling sorry for Maggie and the predicament that she has been left in. Maggie has found a new friend in her carer, Sonia, who is always there for her. The plot has been well thought out and the pace is steady. The twists are plentiful and the tension grows as we get nearer the truth. I was hooked from the first page.

I would like to thank NetGalley, Penguin Books (UK) and the author Nuala Ellwood for my ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Was this review helpful?

„The Day Of The Accident“ is a tragic and haunting story. When Maggie wakes up in hospital she can’t remember what happened to her. Soon she learns that there was a car accident and her daughter drowned. Maggie is devastated and can’t explain to herself what happened and why she put her daughter Elspeth in the car in the first place. To make things worse, her husband Sean has disappeared. Obviously he sold the house, took all the money and left. Maggie is left on her own to cope with her memory loss and a lot of questions.

The story headed in a different direction than I expected. I was hooked, no question, but I personally found the story very depressing. We learn what happened in Maggie’s life so far, how she ended up where she is. And finally we learn what happened on the day of the accident. It is a very sad story and I personally think I read enough books about missing or dead children. It is starting to haunt me.

There is nothing wrong with this book. It is easy to read and the pace is good. It gets a bit unrealistic until the end and there is a lot of talking. But I did not figured out what happened until the end. It is a very sad and haunting story and therefore I can’t say I “enjoyed” it. If you are into dark psychological thriller this one is a good choice. I liked “My Sister’s Bones” better. It was more complex and better structured. But I will watch out for Ellwood’s next book.

Was this review helpful?

A raw and unsettling read that kept me engrossed and guessing right until the reveal, to find out that I had worked it all out completely wrong! You simply won't be able to put this book down.

Many thanks to Netgalley for a copy of this ARC for which I have given my voluntary and unbiased review.

Was this review helpful?

Imagine waking up from a coma to find out your husband has disappeared and your daughter is dead and you’re the one getting the blame. This is Maggies life and she is left with no home , possessions ,money or family .A captivating thriller as Maggie tries to peace her life back together and find out what really did happen the day of the accident .As always my thanks to netgalley and the publisher for my chance to read

Was this review helpful?