I was given a copy of this book by the publisher for an honest review. This is the first book of Cassandra Parkin's I have read but I really enjoyed the book. The book was well written, kept my interest throughout. The book tells the story of Susannah whose son Joel went missing 5 years previous. Susannah sees a medium who tells her Joel will come back to her by Christmas. The book is set mainly in the present day but also goes back in time to when Joel first disappears and also wjen he was first born. It tells the strain a disappearance puts on the whole family. There are a few twists along the way although the final twist I worked out fairly early on but still didn't disappoint. A great story i would recommend this story for fans of psychological thrillers.

3.5 stars
I really liked this at the beginning and the author did a great job of portraying a grieving woman, on the edge. It lost pace for me and I had figured out the end quite early on. It may have benefited from another viewpoint as Susannah's story felt repetitive at times. Still, saying that, I read it to the end pretty quickly and was interested in the portrayal of the family dynamic and the psychic element was intriguing.
Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for this E-copy in return for an honest review.

This is a wonderfully dark exploration of a mother's love. What could have been a fast paced thriller about a missing child becomes a powerful, slower paced, character driven story in the hands of Ms Parkin, that packs a huge emotional punch. It is a book that has lingered in my mind for days now.
Susannah apparently had it all - a loving son, an adoring husband, a beautiful house and a charmed existence. However, when her son goes missing all this is thrown into disarray. The book focusses on Susannah at different points in her life; when Joel goes missing and various times over the subsequent five years. The book touches on fortune tellers, grief, divorce, adoption and the role of the press and the police in cases of missing children. However, the real story is Susannah. As the reader we discover that there were always cracks in her seemingly perfect life, although Susannah is such an unreliable narrator, there are times when it is unclear if she is remembering events correctly, or whether her memories are best understood through the lens of her grief, anguish and hindsight.

The book is infused with an incredibly dark atmosphere and sense of foreboding as the truth about what happened to Joel is revealed in conjunction with Susannah's mental decline.

My thanks go to the publishers and Net Galley for the copy in return for an honest review.

Joel went missing five years ago and has never been found. That event has left devastation in its wake as you would expect - a Mother for whom every day is still a quest for her son, lots of unanswered questions and a marriage that didn't survive. Sussannah has spent years seeking out psychics to help her find her son. As Susannah's mind becomes ever more unhinged the reader is left with her question - Is it right to love a son more than his Father?

This book was really around a 3.5 for me. It is quite slow moving and parts of it were quite repetitive. Susannah's endless drifting got a bit boring and made the book quite turgid. Susannah also seems to be getting some sort of visions (I won't clarify more - spoilers!) around Joel's disappearance leading to ever more erratic behaviour. I found all this quite wishy washy and a bit of a struggle. There is also an unlikely love affair which didn't quite fit into the book as far as I was concerned.

There are good parts to this book. We get flashbacks to Joel's childhood and see the situation between him, Susannah and his Father, John. Was John too hard on Joel, was Susannah too soft? Interesting questions.

This wasn't really a book for me. I did finish it and found the end quite interesting though rather unlikely.

I received a free copy of this book via Netgalley.

3.5 Susannah and John tried to have a child of their own for many years, before making the decision to adopt. Finally, they are notified s young boy, three months old named, Joel was available for adoption. At last they had their son. As we know life is not all roses, and Joel is not an easy child to raise. When John finds marijuana in his now, teenaged sons room, there is an argument. Joel runs out of the house, never to return.

In the aftermath of his disappearance Susannah and in the beginning John visit different mediums, pyschics, hoping to find one that will help them find their son. Susannah starts a blog, warning others of the lack of credibility of most of these shysters. She becomes friends with another woman whose son is also missing. I became quite caught up in Susannshs struggles, trying to retain hope amidst much skepticism. The author does a great job with the tense, melancholy atmosphere, and the myriad of small, meaningful details provided. The public attention brought to a person once a horrible event becomes public, from public condemnation, accusations and from those who sympathize.

Where I felt this story excelled was in the handling of the disintengration of Susanne's thought processes, emotional being. Trying to hold on to what is real, against illusions that are not. Made for some very tense, suspenseful scenes. The book travels to the past, scenes where Joel has just gone missing, contrasted with the limbo, and life changes, Susannah lives in now. Quite well done.

ARC from Netgalley.

This was a very long silly story about a mother looking for her drug addicted son.
He was adopted from a drug user mother, and lived his life being over protected by his mother and not liking his father.
It was too long and drawn out and could have been a lot better shortened.
She spent all her time seeing physics and money trying to find out where he was and it ruined her life.
Sorry not for me.

How do you watch a person going mad, page by page, ever so slowly, ripping you apart, page by page, ever so slowly? A child goes missing, sanity is bright, shiny and not real. Psychological torture on each page, in so many words, sentences, paragraphs.

Susannah and John want their perfect family but there are problems and they are unable to conceive. One perfect winter’s day they are matched to a foundling and with the adoption of Joel they are a family. Now they are three and everything they hoped for is not bliss. John is too demanding, Susannah is too forgiving, and Joel is manipulative. It is a wearisome story and would be easily dismissed except the reader becomes a party to the conflict by contemplating a question constantly asked; Is it normal for a parent to love a child more than their spouse?

Susannah expects us to forgive and give her a pass when she can’t afford herself that forgiveness. But the ability to acknowledge a failing and the ability to right a wrong never come together. She blogs and warns never to trust a psychic and yet she runs from one to another seeking any reassurance. Sanity is a pretend thing, the mud keeps pulling her down, slowly, ever so slowly.

Cassandra Parkin has written the most agonizing story about the devastation left behind when a child goes missing. Well written if a bit repetitive. Just shy of four stars.

Thank you NetGalley and Legend Press for a copy.

This book was okay. For me it moved kinda slow and the ending was weird. This is one of those books that people are either going to love it or hate it.

Excellent. Spooky, poignant, well written and gripping. The supernatural elements worked well and the internal logic was flawless. A recommended winter read.

3.5 stars

Susannah Harper's son, Joel, has been missing for five years. Susannah refuses to believe her son is dead and clings to her desperate hope that he is alive and will return to her one day. Unable to cope with their son's disappearance, Susannah and her husband, John divorce. This leaves Susannah alone to blog and follow whatever leads which may come up however misleading and cruel they may be. As she is obsessed with finding answers about her son's disappearance, she turns to psychics. One night she visits a fair with her sister and visits a fortune teller, who tells her three vague things such as her son will come back to her but not the how, why or where. Susannah is left wanting more answers and things get a little wonky. From Susannah's point of view, she is doing fine but her sister points out how Susannah scared her children at the fair.

Soon Susannah is hallucinating, and scenes occurred, and while reading them, I questioned whether the scenes were real, figments of her imagination, results of stress or if they were really happening. Something isn't quite right with her hallucinations and she questions if her missing son is trying to send her messages. One might question if the stress of not knowing is playing tricks on her mind? Is her constant turmoil and search for the truth affecting her perception? Or is she just a sleep deprived Mother coping with the disappearance of her child?

This is a slower paced book which tells the story through Susannah in the present with glimpses back into the past. Susannah and John tried hard for a child and felt blessed when their "winters child" entered their lives. Happy to be parents, the couple often had differing viewpoints on how to parent Joel.

This book also shows through the responses to her blog, the sick and cruel way, people try to prey on the loss of others. To use their hope against them for their own means.

This book has some twists but none that really wowed me. The ending was more alike an "aha" moment. I wasn't shocked and I'm not sure if most readers will be, but it will still evoke emotion. The word "haunting" comes up a lot in the description of this book. That feels about right. Something isn't quite right, and I dare you to put your finger on it. This psychological thriller is chilling, thought provoking and has the reader feeling various emotions while reading. If you are looking for an edge-of-your-seat-page-turner you wont quite get it here. I found this to be a slower paced book but one that is still enjoyable.

Thank you to Legend Press and NetGalley who provided me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. All the thoughts and opinions expressed in this review are my own.

This is a sad story and ultimately I found it rather boring. The writing style did not draw me in nor did the central plot so I decided not to finish reading it.

First, a big thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the ARC I was given in exchange for my fair and honest review.

Boy, do I have some thoughts on this one.

Anyone want to guess how long it took me just to decide on the star rating on Goodreads? Short answer: I'm still deliberating over whether I made the right choice.

Here's my problem: this is one those rare books where I legitimately don't know if I want to give it a four or a two, so I split the difference, give it a three, and feel really off about it because I know that whether I skew positive or skew negative, it doesn't deserve a three. Let me break this down for you: the book was well-written. There are beautifully crafted (but not overdone) descriptions, the characters are mostly very well-developed (and when they're not, I recognize that it's my own personal feelings that make me want more of Nick, but it would've been a bad plot move), and a lot of the moments feel very authentic. The central conflict--which I'd ay revolves around the protagonist's self doubt about her relationship with her ex-husband more than anything to do with her missing son--feels incredibly authentic. So much can most parents relate, in fact, that at times even that authenticity can't save us because it's too familiar. It's familiar enough that it's in basically every book ever: the mom is too lenient and doesn't support the dad, who wants more discipline. Okay. We've got it. It's not a bad book, but this particular problem is not even close to original.

"Then," you ask, "Why the desire to give it two stars?"

Well, I'll tell you: the book was mostly boring and it ended by going off the rails. For a relatively short book (under 300 pages), the pacing felt super slow, especially towards the end. The climactic scene, the one where Susannah finally sees how wrong she'd been about what she assumed happened, felt like it would never end. Seriously, no spoilers, but if that daggone psychic said he was scared one more time, I would've been tempted to lose my mind. I want my thrillers to be thrilling; I don't want to be constantly checking my percentage to see how much more I have to plow through to get to the totally unsurprising ending. I have read some reviews that said that ending was surprising and I have constructed a list of reasons to explain that phenomenon:

1) Those reviewers have never read (or seen) a thriller.
2) Those reviewers skipped the last third of the book that gave giant, flashing warnings about the upcoming ending.
3) Those reviewers are lying.

In short, I wouldn't really recommend this book as it just wasn't very entertaining. After really working through my thoughts in this review, I'm skewing more towards 2/5 stars.
http://bibwithblog.blogspot.com/2018/09/book-review-winters-child-by-cassandra.html

Susannah is living every mother's worst nightmare; her child is missing. To try to make sense of her tragedy, Susannah start a blog, warning other parents of missing children how not to be taken in by charlatans and fake psychics who will try to exploit their situation. But even as Susannah writes her blog, a small part of her really wants to believe that a psychic can help. when I psychic tells her that her missing son will return by Christmas, she believes her. But then Susannah begins seeing and experiencing things that couldn't be real - could they? did her husband really kill her son - and will she be next? Parkin gives us a good spooky tale with A WINTER'S CHILD but the pacing was a bit slow, which affected her ability to build suspense. The book had an unexpected twist at the end, though!

Some novels cry out 'book group read', and often when they do that's a bad thing. This cries out 'book group read', but for all the right reasons. You can easily natter for hours about the high drama of the story, as a woman in contemporary England runs a blog defaming psychics and mediums such as those that haven't reunited her with her missing son. You soon see she's an unreliable narrator – that's more nattering. And the discussion as to whether she made her lad a mummy's boy, or whether it's the husband's ideas of parenting that are at fault – well, that will really cut into the time for deciding on the next book.

More instantly you get the creepiness of the woman's succumbing to the inevitable breakdown, the initial promises made to our heroine, and more. This really is a thriller with writing about themes and topics, and recognisable people – until… Yup, while trying to give as little away as possible, the book does something that really shoots itself in the foot, and kills off any chance of further surprises. Which is a shame, as this is so vividly readable it doesn't need televising. I got all this front and foremost on my mind's eye, but the hiccup with structure is too damning a one to say that it's without flaws. It is just very good company for the day. Especially when you have a group in which you can discuss the problem with it afterwards...

A dark thriller about a missing child and the impact it has on the parents, this was a good read with a twist at the end (although I did suspect it near the end). I didn't quite get the part about Suzanne's blogging, or how it related to the story. I liked the setting in and around Hull, but found the characters mostly unsympathetic, Suzanne in particular.
Thanks to the publisher for a review copy.

This was a deep, dark, atmospheric thriller, and although it was rather easy to figure out the "whodunit" about 1/4 of the way through, the narrator of the book is a real study in batsh*t crazy. Susannah and Joel are unable to conceive so they adopt; the book is a dual narrative, bouncing between Susannah's POV and a timeline of her blog, which offers advice on coping with the loss of a child/missing children and on why grieving parents shouldn't believe psychic charlatans who will steal your money during periods of vulnerability. Susannah's grip on reality becomes ever more tenuous throughout the book and she is being haunted by visions of what happened to her son Joel 5 years previous but she still doesn't have a clear picture of what truly occurred, she only knows that according to an eerily accurate foretelling from a psychic at Hull fair, he'll return to her by Christmas this year. The closer Christmas draws, the more frequent the visions she's experiencing occur, until a climactic event involving the original investigating detective from her son's case. This is a page turner of a thriller and a not to be missed read!

Thanks Netgalley and the Publisher. This is not normally the sort of book I pick up but I absolutely loved it, it was moving, emotional and beautifully written. Would highly recommend.

Middle-aged Susannah's superficially aesthetically-pleasing perfect-on-paper world has fallen apart: her adopted teen-aged son Joel is missing, her doctor husband John ended their marriage, and her sister Melanie is losing all patience with her. I was distracted by the constant cutting back and forth in time with flashbacks, and the alternating diary and blog entries, yet still I could see the solution to this mystery before reaching the half-way point. Cassandra Parkin is good at the horror bits, and was hilarious on her blog (https://cassandraparkin.wordpress.com/), but I do feel she was a little slipshod with character motivation here.

The unreliable narrator premise makes for lots of confusion, but why a random isolated mention of a twin sister nemesis named Bella? Who puts dust bunnies down their sink? Why would a surgeon allow his wife to eat a sandwich right in front of him, without asking her to wash her admittedly filthy hands first?

This book missed the mark for me. I generally LOVE re-tellings of classics, fairytales and favorites. This book just didn't do it for me. I felt it was a bit too short and anti-climatic. It also didn't have any believable romance...and the characters just didn't click for me.

Reading this new novel is about feeling empathy for Susannah Harper whose son Joel disappeared five years ago after an argument with his father, John. Joel storms off and never comes home. The pain of losing a child is a trope commonly used in novels. This plot involves a mother who lives and breaths Joel's absence every second of her life. Susannah and John divorced when it became too intense.

Susannah lives only to try to find some crumb of evidence that will lead her to her son. She writes a blog that focuses on psychics who she thinks prey on the broken people who have lost loved ones, especially those who have lost children. Susannah accidentally meets a young woman named Jackie who has lost her child, and they have a few encounters that form a friendship.

This novel takes several twists and turns with Susannah getting more and more mentally rattled. She begins to see things that aren't there, and as readers, we take a wild ride to the end. The novel is a real page-turner and so very sad.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for giving me an advanced copy of this novel to read.