The Winter’s Child is a well written mystery. I enjoyed the plot. Author is new to me and I enjoyed her writing style. Fans of mysteries will enjoy this book. My thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for for my Arc. This is my unbiased review.

I was enticed by the description of this book offering a “ghostly winter mystery with a modern gothic flavour”. How disappointed I was.

Susannah Harper’s son Joel went missing five years ago. Despite a police investigation Joel has never been found. Susannah, at first supported by her husband John, seeks the help of psychic mediums to reveal to her what happened to her beloved son. Despite her gradual realisation that they are all charlatans (and the book is laced with a continuing tirade against them) Susannah guiltily consults a fairground fortune teller who tells her Joel will come back to her by Christmas.

With a format of flashbacks to an earlier life with Joel, the aftermath of Joel’ disappearance and current time, the reader learns of Susannah’s desperation for a child and her somewhat smothering parenting of him. We learn that Susannah and John’s marriage becomes a casualty of the situation, whilst Susannah cuts a lonely, increasingly manic character searching for answers.

The initial couple of chapters promised much. After which the whole thing became totally bizarre descending into absolute absurdity. A policeman who when taking Susannah into an interview room stumbled into an interview already taking place with another parent with a missing child who provides personal introductions?! Come on! And who later commences a ludicrous (and cringeworthy) sexual relationship with an increasingly demented Susannah. Completely ridiculous. An alibi accepted by same said policeman from a shadowy elderly neighbour (also coincidentally grieving for his own daughter) who never leaves the house. What?!

I was intensely irritated by the author’s repetitive use of informal non-words - “plushy”, “slippy”. Plus simple mistakes such as she sat ‘drinking her hot chocolate” then seconds later stirs sugar into her “coffee”. The many poetic references to winter and its visual effects of frost on leaves smacked of a creative writing course and really grated too.

There were many times when I wanted to metaphorically enact the Kindle equivalent of chucking the book across the room but slogged on in order to give an honest review in return for a copy of this book from Netgalley.

Cassandra Parkin has written a dark and moving story about heartbreak.

Susannah had the perfect life. A happy husband, a lovely home, and a much loved son, Joel. Susannah and Joel were always close, where Joel and John struggled to connect. One night, after a terrible fight between Joel and John, Joel leaves and never returns.

Five years has gone by with no clues to Joel's location. Susannah happens to visit with a psychic who tells Sarah that Joel will return to her on Christmas. This is where Susannah starts to spin out of control. Hallucinations, personal torture, and obsession dominate Susannah's life.

This is a story about mother's and heartbreak. How much do you love your children? HOW MUCH?

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read and review this book .

This book threw some twists and turns that I definitely did not see coming! Five years earlier Susannah Harper’s son, Joel, mysteriously vanished one day without a trace. In this book, we are taken on a journey in non-linear time learning the story of Joel. While we see the closeness between Susannah and Joel, we learn about the on-going conflicts between Joel and his father, John. Susannah is breaking down as she sees visions that seem almost paranormal. Susannah has a past of seeing psychics, with the hope that this one will be legit. Psychics play a large role in this story, but not in the way you would think, again, plot twist! Just when you have everything figured out, major twists happen. I became so engrossed that I forgot it was summer and could feel the snow and chilly air. If you are into psychological thrillers, check this one out.

Thank you to Legend Times Group and NetGalley for providing me with an advanced readers copy in exchange for an honest review.

Susannah and John are a happy couple, they have what some would say a perfect life but one thing is missing, a child. After many failed attempts to have their own child they decide to adopt a baby boy called Joel. Susannah and John have very different ways of bring Joel up and he becomes a troubled teen. At 15 he runs away from school and he is never seen again. Susannah has only one goal left in her and thats to find out what happened to her son at any cost. Five years on and after failed attempts in seeking help from mediums and clairvoyants she is given hope by a medium in a fair ground.

This is a brilliant, haunting thriller that leaves you wanting more and more. The author has an amazing talent to make you feel everything Susannah feels through her writing. This book is every mother's worst nightmare and it captured this wonderfully throughout with the style of writing.

--I received a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts are purely my own and not influenced in any way.--
Well, this book was explosive and I finished it quicker than any book in recent memory! I've read books like these before, so I guessed the ending pretty early on, but what a ride it was! Our main character, Suzanna, is not the most likeable protagonist and she made me so angry multiple times throughout the story, but I REALLY wanted to see how it ended so I didn't mind. This got all the right notes for me, and I look forward to reading more from her in the future!

Wow I loved it , I started off thinking it was one kind of book and ended up in an entirely different one. I was completely gripped and the ending was written so atmospheric I wouldn't of known what was happening around me as I was right there in that book with Susannah watching everything unfold.

The cover of this book immediately attracted me (I know, you should never judge a book by it's cover) and I was not disappointed.
I've read several books recently where time flips between present and the past, and I was pleased that this was one of the easier stories to follow.
I enjoyed the super natural nod.

After reading Underwater Breathing from Cassandra Parkin I was eager to also read this one. And I was not disappointed. She clearly knows how to build suspense and to build a story, creating an atmosphere where nothing is at seems on the first glance, and many things lie beneath the appearances.

Susannah Parker is one of those characters that you love to hate, or at least my dislike for her started pilling up as the book flowed. And yet, I didn't seem to be able to put the book down and just wanted to know how it would end, even when I started suspecting how that would be.

Recommended to everyone who likes a good story, well told, that unfolds in unexpected ways.

Liked the mix of the mundane and slight hint of supernatural. This is more than a missing person, it is the recanting of a life turned upside down. Susannah is just about holding it together and we follow her journey as she tries to find out what really happened to her son. Very unexpected ending!

This is the story of a woman whose teenage son goes missing. The story begins a number of years later where we discover that her marriage has ended and she now writes a blog talking about how the specific way in which psychics try to take advantage of parents with missing children.

The book revolves around here continuing work to determine the whereabouts of her missing son, her emotional struggles to come to terms with the different way that she and her ex-husband had parented, and her struggles to maintain relationships with people since her son’s disappearance. As the book continues, she begins having supernatural-seeming experiences, that may or may not be hallucinations leading her towards and understanding of her child’s fate.

I found this book a pleasant enough read, but it felt similar to too many thrillers that I have read over the past few years. I am ready to be done with the unreliable narrator trope, and I didn’t find this version brought anything particularly new to the genre.

The Winter’s Child is an eerie novel about a woman’s son who went missing and the lengths she is willing to go to get him back. Flipping back and forth between the past and present, you slowly learn more about the sinister events leading up to his disappearance.

I am immediately drawn to any book that has the word “winter” in the title. That along with the beautiful cover is what drew me to The Winter’s Child. What I found was unexpected…a novel that was compulsively readable and kept me on the edge of my seat up until the very last page. I was expecting a much lighter read but it was actually quite dark.

I really enjoyed the psychic aspects of the story. I have read many books that involve missing children and I have never read one that included psychics in that way. It was very believable and added so much emotion to the story, really helping to show the intense pain that parents of missing children are in and the lengths they are willing to go to to find their loved ones.

Well, this book, despite its title and setting, doesn’t counteract the obscenely hot summer weather we’re having. But it does take your mind off of it. In fact, it’s unbelievably (literally) compelling for being such a flawed book. Where does one even start here? Ok, how about…this book featured the most irredeemably loathsome narrator I’ve encountered in a while. Yes, this is another one of those female authored female centered suspense thrillers and the main character is a mother. No, actually, she’s a Mother. She’s dedicated her entire life to one goal and in backfired explosively. She’s obsessive, obsessed, grief stricken and slowly driven mad by her idle mind. She’s also manipulative, overbearing and cunning. She controls her adoring spouse and later her worshipping lover with sex to make sure they do her bidding. She’s the sort of woman who is well away of what women like her do and say, she’s a type and is well aware of it. She’s a slender attractive blue eyed blonde who uses her looks and put upon helpless act to get her away, the sort of woman who’d use baby doll voice to ask for things. In a word, tedious. Susannah (don’t abbreviate her name, she won’t stand for it, John and Joel were meant to be a happy family. She had it all planned out. It didn’t work out. Joel disappeared, the marriage ended and now she’s all alone with nothing to do for years, living off of alimony presumably, with nothing to do her mind starts feeding on itself spinning her into spiraling madness. Not only a classic unreliable narrator, she’s a genuinely unlikeable one. She has smothered and cosseted her son into becoming a pathetically weak young man, repeatedly sabotaging any attempt of John’s to get him straightened out. She’s effectively solely responsible for the demise of her marriage, from suspecting John of terrible things to wasting thousands on psychics. She’s as odious and as unsympathetic of a character as you can find. You won’t love to hate her, you’ll just hate her. The fact that the book works with her at the center of it is…well, astonishing, really. Essentially as a reader you spend the entire book wrapped up in her lunacy. I’d be ok with that if the payoff was worth it, but alas, the ending can be predicted from a mile’s equivalent of digital words away. And in a suspense thriller that’s just a no no. Spending 288 pages with that horrid protagonist would have been tolerable had the prerequisite twist ending was sufficiently twisted…maybe. But don’t leave me with this psychotic mess and not properly surprise me at the end. That’s just…disappointing. Good thing the book had that weirdly mesmerizing quality of watching a train wreck in slow motion. The author can write, the characters she comes up with, though…that’s another matter altogether. Thanks Netgalley.

There were some real thought provoking moments in this book...Mainly how people pray on others in time of distress... using a missing child to try gain a small amount of money.
How psychics used clues and cues to guess at your story.
The story itself was quite a page Turner,but I had my suspicions all along who did it.
I was conflicted on Joel... did he need help and support the way Sussannah provided it,or would John be in the right to think he needed to man up.... as more of his history was revealed I still couldn't decide.
The final part of book seemed a bit fast.... 
But over all,it kept me entertained.

A good read once you get into it but spoiled somewhat for me by the blog posts which added nothing to the story. I’m not a fan of anything gothic either but I think other readers might feel differently.

An exceptionally well written atmospheric thriller, incredibly moving and an utterly compelling read. The plot is beautifully paced and, despite the fact that I guessed the twist at the end part way through, it still packed a very satisfying, highly emotional punch.

Thank You NetGalley for the free ARC.

Suspenseful novel about the disappearance of a teenage boy and the mother's struggle to not believe psychics. Very gloomy!

Oh my! I just finished The Winter's Child by Cassandra Parkin and it was a doozy! It was one of those so-good-you-forget-you-have-a-life-and-responsibilities books and had me gripped from the get go. We meet Susannah Harper, a mom of her adopted son, Joel, who's been missing for 5 years. While at the Hull Fair with her sister, niece, and nephew, she meets with a fortune-teller who gives her some eerie premonitions- one being that her son will come back to her before next Christmas. 

Ironically, Susannah maintains a blog which focuses on psychics and fortune-tellers being total frauds and con artists, so she keeps her fortune telling escapade a secret at first. The book jumps between the present and the past, from the time Susannah and her now ex-husband adopted Joel and up to the time he disappears. The family dynamics were so real between mom and son vs. dad and son that it made me think of my own family, and evaluate whether or not I do some of the same things with my children (being overly easy on them, covering for silly mistakes, etc).

Parkin's writing is captivating and dark, and I was so disturbed and heartbroken for the entire family throughout the entire book. I kept thinking maybe I had things figured out, right up until the very end when I discovered I had it ALL WRONG! The Winter's Child had just the right amount of creepy, suspense, mysterious elements while still maintaining extremely relatable characters.  

4 out of 5 stars for The Winter's Child by Cassandra Parkin. 

Thank you to NetGalley and Legend Press, as well as author Cassandra Parkin, for the opportunity to read and give my honest review.

I really enjoyed Cassandra Parkin’s novel Lily’s House, so I was very eager to read her latest, especially when I heard it was a “ghostly winter mystery with a modern gothic flavour”. It sounded irresistible!

With an eye for detail and a very unique voice that captured my attention straight away, Parkin has a real knack in bringing her characters and settings to life. As in Lily’s House, I loved the mixture of the unreliable narrator with just the slightest touch of the magical, this time in the form of mystics and fortune tellers. Truth or lie? Reality or fantasy? This question was ever foremost in my mind whilst reading this book, as Susannah’s mind slowly unravels under the strain of looking for her missing child. I loved the way Parkin explored the demons of a mother whose child has vanished without a trace – surely every parent’s worst nightmare – and the ways in which she is trying to make her life whole again.

Family secrets again feature strongly in this novel, adding the irresistible spice that will make you sit up late into the night to get answers. Which is the very reason I will not delve into the story line too deeply here. I recommend going into this one blindly and letting yourself get swept up in the rapids of the narrative, twisting and turning and bumping over rocks, head under water gasping for breath.

Yes, there is also that atmospheric, bleak and chilly setting that helps your blood run cold as all the truths are finally revealed in a kaleidoscope of nightmarish images that so masterfully convey the very essence of the story. Readers who enjoy the “book within a book” concept as much as I do will appreciate excerpts from Susannah’s blog giving her account of what it is like to be the parent of a missing child. Whilst I can’t say I particularly “liked” Susannah, she is a masterful creation, a flawed character with an emotional depth that drove the story for me. Her blog was an imaginative way to get glimpses into her mind that added that extra something as the mystery unravelled.

As the boundaries between reality and fantasy become blurred, the story takes on a more sinister tone, which chilled me to the core – so very clever! Only to end with a final reveal that had me totally gobsmacked.

Okay, before I give anything away, let’s sum it up: if you are a fan of a chilling mystery with an atmospheric, gothic setting, an unreliable narrator and a little sprinkling of a magical element, then I strongly recommend this book. Parkin has rapidly made her way onto my list of authors to look out for, and I can’t wait to see what she comes up with next!

This is a dark family drama about a boy who has been missing for 5 years. Joel was 15 the day he disappeared. His mother, Susannah, has been a wreck ever since, her grief all consuming, costing her her marriage and perhaps even her sanity.

Soon after Joel disappeared Susannah began consulting Clairvoyants and Psychics in an attempt to find out what happened to her son. Eventually she realised that they are nothing but liars and charlatans, only out to scam desperate people out of their money, and Susannah then started a blog to warn others in situations similar to hers not to fall for the trickery of the fraudsters. Then one evening when the fair is in town Susannah finds herself drawn to the caravan of a Fortuneteller who has a few things to say about Susannah's situation.

This book did not turn out to be what I was expecting although it is a compelling, very dark and at times disturbing crime mystery. It is rather predictable from the beginning, and I was unconvinced by the romantic element, but it is still a decent read with a very complex main character in Susannah.