Good read although not sure I enjoyed the ending, kept me turning pages though so it redeems itself there...Would recommend!

This made quite uncomfortable reading at times. The many references to brutal, real-life killers of children and the sinister undertones to it. I guessed the twist quite early on, but really hoped that right would be done in the end. However, the last few paragraphs added another, unseen twist, which left me hanging and feeling rather shuddery.

It was hard to feel much sympathy for any of the characters. All were flawed and it felt we only scratched the surface of them. Indeed, there were probably a couple of characters too many, but all in all I enjoyed the book and I suspect it will stay with me for a while.

The Flower Girls is a disturbing, compulsive psychological thriller with a dark twist. Whilst I am not keen on novels about child murder, in this novel the author keeps graphic detail to a minimum and presents a clever and we'll plotted story.

I loved the atmosphere of this book. Reminiscent of Picnic at Hanging Rock with punchy characters and a cracking mystery.

An excellent read and beautifully written with well-differentiated and convincing characters.. A twisty turny plot that was always believable and built the tension up brilliantly. No real red herrings and a few hints to the eventual ending, but a very satisfactory conclusion with the roast meat, caramelised vegetables and garlic taking us nicely full circle.

Disturbing and scarily close to events that have happened in the news. A great read, and sensitively handled subject matter.

You ever finish a book and just think... huh. Cos that's me right now. I have absolutely no idea what rating to give this, but I need to talk about it, so here we are.I requested this ARC immediately after reading the blurb, I'm sure I've mentioned before, but I am a Basic Bitch™ and I love crime novels/investigations and here we are, a crime novel about killer children? You know I was going to be all over it.Was it an engaging read? Yes.Did it tantalise the A Level psychology in me? Yes.Did I enjoy it?... I don't know.  Here's the thing, I hate giving bad reviews and this isn't a bad book, it has just left me with thoughts.YOU'LL NEVER FORGET THE FLOWER GIRLSThe Flower Girls. Laurel and Primrose. One convicted of murder, the other given a new identity.Now, nineteen years later, another child has gone missing.And The Flower Girls are about to hit the headlines all over again...Let's break this down.This book is an engaging psychological exploration and there is plenty it does right. It's an addictive read, I desperately tore through the pages wanting to know what happened to Georgie, wanting to know if Hazel would remember what happened in 1997... Will we ever find out why these things happened?It did take up a lot of my brain space and as it frequently wove real life crimes in with these two fictional ones, it was dark and disturbing. Which crime novels need a good dose of.However...This book had too many POVs, some of which were fascinating, but others seemed a bit pointless. If it had just been Hilliar, Hazel, Laurel and Johanna I think it would have flowed better and we could have spent more time seeing how the Flower Girls incident affected and shaped each one of them.This book also left me with huge questions that I tried really hard to ignore. One character is being blackmailed, but the culprit doesn't make sense because of their circumstances. Another is to blame for the brief disappearance of a young girl, but the motivation behind it is never discussed. There aren't enough answers and the ending left me unsatisfied. Hence my conundrum. I don't know what star rating to go for. Because it was enjoyable and engrossing but also... Huh.Generally speaking this was an interesting premise with lots of promise, but ultimately it left me disappointed.

The Flower Girls is the label applied by the media to two young girls, Laurel and Primrose, whose involvement in a murder generates lurid tabloid headlines. But the body of this novel goes behind the headlines to explore the damage done - over a period of 20 years - to the lives of everyone connected to this dreadful crime. The writing is tight and the characters vividly believable. There are twists and turns aplenty and several edge-of -the-seat moments. But the overarching theme is one of conviction. Be it that of the Toby [the lawyer], Joanne[ the bereaved aunt], Hillier[the policewoman], Max[the frustrated author] to name but a few. Since so many of the characters in this novel invest themselves in Laurel and Primrose it is hardly surprising some of them have damaged lives, or careers, as a result. Was their investment worth it? Were their actions and beliefs justified? The only way for you to find out is to obtain a copy of this gripping novel and read it right to the last page. Now there's a clue!

This was great - creepily disturbing throughout. Well written with well rounded characters, it was really believable. Thoroughly recommend.

I’m not formatting this review the same way I usually do purely because I don’t have enough to talk about in all the sections I generally use. So instead I’ll talk about the negatives and the positives.

But first I just want to touch on thoughts that aren’t necessarily positives or negatives. This is the first time I have read an adult Thriller and I really don’t know how to feel about how the book ends. I think this is purely because I generally read YA and I am so used to the typical, everything is resolved in the end, type books. Which this is NOT! Most things were revealed to the reader but then you are thrown a spanner at the end that makes you sit there thinking ‘NO, what, help!’. There is also two major things that are mentioned once at the end and it’s not explained and I want to know why & how!! To some degree I get it and understand that leaving it how the author did makes it thrilling and makes you think. I’m not okay with not really knowing how things would end though!

Negatives:

So I have 2 main things that annoyed me with this book.

First off, the POV, this book is told in third person POV which I always struggle with a bit. It was the same in this book, I couldn’t really connect with the characters. So while I wanted to know what happened because I was curious as hell, I didn’t care who it specifically was because I didn’t have a connection with any of the characters that made me root for one or the other. The POV just meant I was a bit disconnected from the book and it’s characters.

Next is the jumps in the time line of events. Honestly the book was all over the place when it came to the time line of events. Each chapter would swap between who we were following, where the person was & the time line. Things were barely ever revealed simply in order. I appreciated the glimpses into the past sprinkled throughout the book. They were distinguished by a simple ‘1997’ or ‘1998’ at the start of the chapter however they were also no in order and while the ‘1997’ or ‘1998’ made it easy to know that we were in the past but not when specifically in the time line of events.
All this jumping around simply made the book hard to follow. Most chapters were only a couple chapters and some of the time it took most of the chapter figuring out when & where we were currently looking at.

Positives:

This book took a bit of getting used to with the POV & time jumps which took about 100/150 pages but once I got into it I was hooked! I read the last 200ish pages in one day easily!

The chapters are super short which means you feel like you are getting through the book quickly, which I was but it just added to it. Some of the chapters also ended on cliff hangers of sorts and then the next chapter would be completely unrelated to whatever just went down. So you are gripped and speed through the next couple chapters till you find out what just happened after that cliff hanger. This book is very hard to put down in that way. I was literally walking about the house reading it while doing other things because I just wanted to know what happens.

Every character in this book is very fleshed out and interesting. They all have very different views & backgrounds. It was really interesting learning about these characters and figuring out what happened to make them who they are. Granted they aren’t all revealed, but that is just part of the mystery.

Lastly this book is COMPLETELY UNPREDICTABLE!! You think you have a grasp on what went down but then a spanner, no scratch that, the whole fucking toolbox is thrown into the works and your ideas are completely out the door.

When a baby girl is found murdered the whole country is shocked to learn that 10yr old and a 6yr old sister were to blame. One goes into hiding whilst the other goes to prison. The book centres on these two girls and those around that are involved in their lives. The family of the little girl want a murder to mean life and won't let it go. Is the conviction right or was it someone else who knows, you will only find out if you read the book.

A great thriller that was quite dark and had lots of twists and turns. Kept me gripped from the beginning.

Really enjoyed this book and all the little twists and turns. Although the ending didn't quite gel for me, and I would like a few more of the loose ends to have been tied up. Will definitely read more from this author!

This book is a fantastic thriller that took me an embarrassingly long time to read because I had to keep setting it aside to calm down. It had my stomach in knots!

I’ll definitely have to keep this author on my radar!

This book contains some really good twists and the perspective of the innocent party in a couple of sisters involved in the horrendous abduction and murder of a child - thankfully this isn't graphically portrayed!

Well written and plotted, switching between now and the time of the murder, this is a book with a disturbing sense of unease focusing on family loyalty, and the love between mothers and daughters. Laurel (the older sister) is behind bars, seemingly unrepentant and abandoned by her family except for her terminally ill uncle who is also her legal representative whilst Rosie, who has blanked out all memory of that fateful day got to start a new life with her parents under new identities, all thinking they can put the past behind them. Laurel is up for parole a child goes missing and pushes Rosie into the spotlight with intrusive press coverage and police interest. Will facing her sister bring back Rosie's memory - does she want it to?

Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read this book - the opinions expressed are my own.

A dark and disturbing psychological thriller. A real page turner with great twists that makes you think.

The Flower Girls were infamous for the horrific murder of young Kirstie Swann in the 1990’s. Laurel was 10 years old and Primrose was only 6 when they committed this crime and Laurel was imprisoned for this act of violence. Primrose was given a new identity with her parents following Laurels conviction as she was too young to be tried.

Now twenty years later Laurel is trying to appeal her conviction again, pleading that the death of the toddler was an accident. It appears though that someone does not want Laurel to be released from prison and will go at lengths to ensure she remains where she is.

This was quite a dark tale about an innocent child being murdered in cold blood and really reminded me of the awful real life story of young James Bulger that took place when I was a young child. There was some awful revelations in the book that the author drew out and did a really good job of, I did feel however the ending was a little blunt and could have been developed a bit better.

This was a great book kept me hooked from the first page not my normal genre. I think this would make an excellent book club book

A really good read I found it disturbing at times with little children behind involved in a terrible act on a two-year old child sussed part of it out early on but a great twist at the end of this well written novel which had some unsavoury characters as well as a child who lost her freedom trying to do right by her sibling Rosie a chilling novel

This was a good missing child story. An original take on an overused concept (twins) and kept me reading. However I felt the ending was a little far fetched for me. It's just my personal preference though.