I had been a big fan of Fiona Barton's previous two novels The Widow and The Child so I was looking forward to reading The Suspect. Rosie and Alex are backpacking in Thailand and after their parents report them missing, their bodies are found. A reporter goes out to Thailand to investigate and discovers that her own son might be wrapped up in the incident as he was travelling in Phuket.

I found that I really struggled with keeping focus on this book. I'm normally a quick reader but it took me a while to get through it and I found it a bit of a slog. The characters didn't really draw me in and I was disinterested in what happened to them. It's not badly written and is an easy read but I didn't really enjoy it.

I was really looking forward to reading the Suspect, thanks to Netgalley for the advanced copy. We are back with the familiar characters from Fiona Barton, Kate the reporter and Bob the detective as their lives cross in another case. This time though it's personal to Kate.
Kate's son is travelling in Bangkok, but he hasn't been in touch for a while and Kate is worried. When two girls Alex and Rosie go missing in Bangkok, Kate picks up the story and flies out to find the girls.
Alex and Rosie are found dead and the story starts to be told.
The book is told from a few different perspectives, Kates, Bob'a and Alex's. I enjoyed the way the story was told and the information was useful and easy to follow despite flicking back and forwards in time a little.
The Suspect didn't grip me as much as Fiona Barton's previous books, however I enjoyed the read and the twists and turns that arrived were well written.

A great tense read! Full of gripping moments and twists and turns.
The story was exciting to read and the characters were fleshed out well.

Fiona Barton is very good at writing intriguing, complex stories that will have you hooked from the first chapter. I enjoy the change in POV's and seeing the characters progress and evolve through the story is compelling. As i read i felt that the story was steadily building to some sort of big finish. It built and built but it never reached that ending and i felt rather let down at how it ended. I'd hoped it would go out with a bang as opposed to a whimper. Perhaps Barton had intended the final twist to be the bang but i saw it coming a mile off. The Suspect is definitely worth reading but i was hoping for more.

Having read one of Barton's previous novels, THE WIDOW, I was excited when I saw this come up for request. Unfortunately it didn't grip me the same way THE WIDOW did, and because of that I didn't enjoy the story as much as I'd hoped.

I'm still willing to give Barton's work another go in the future.

I read this novel in two sittings and less that 24 hours. It was unputdownable, really fun to read, and kept me guessing at every turn. I really empathised with Kate and the parents, found the story believable and well-paced, and the characters were well-developed. It took me a bit to get into the flow of each chapter but I ended up really enjoying the structure of this novel. The story was really interesting and I can totally see this being turned into a movie! *Thank you to NetGalley for the opportunity to read this and to the author for the pleasure of digging into this novel. I will review on Amazon as soon as it is launched. Thanks again!"

The Suspect by Fiona Barton is a thriller with quite a few twist and turns.
When two girls on their gap year go missing in Thailand, Kate a reporter starts looking into this. Her son is in Thailand and she sees this case as a way of reconnecting with him. When the girls bodies are found in suspicious circumstances Kate's son is one of the suspects.
This is the third book I have read by this author and I have enjoyed them all and I am looking forward to her next book.
Thank you to NetGalley and Random House UK, Transworld Publishers for my e-copy in exchange for an honest review.

I would like to thank Netgalley and Random House UK, Transworld Publishers for an advance copy of The Suspect, the third novel to feature journalist Kate Waters.

When teenagers Alex O’Connor and Rosie Shaw disappear when on holiday in Thailand Kate is all over the story, but at the back of her mind is her son Jake who took off for Thailand two years previously and has hardly been in contact since.

I enjoyed The Suspect which has an interesting storyline, plenty of twists and some good characterisation. I do, however, feel that the format let it down as it couldn’t hold my attention and I found it an easy book to put down in favour of doing something else. It has both a shifting timeline and narrator so the reader is never on firm ground as the perspective is constantly changing. The narration switches between Kate, “the reporter”, Lesley O’Connor, “the mother” DI Bob Sparkes, “the detective” and Alex O’Connor whose story is told in flashback over the course of the novel.

I liked the story of what happened to the girls which I think is quite realistic if you discount a couple of incredible coincidences. A straightforward, linear narrative would have been more absorbing but would not have had the same impact as many of the twists come from not knowing the outcome. I also think that Ms Barton uses the format well to convey Lesley’s grief and unpredictable behaviour which would also not have had the same impact in a more traditional format. I also like the way she uses the reader’s ignorance to tease out the real situation as the novel progresses.

It doesn’t help the reader that most of the characters are uniformly unappealing - grief does not bring out the best in people - although the emotions and sniping seem very realistic. I enjoyed some of the more barbed comments and I’ll bet Ms Barton had a ball writing them.

I think many readers who don’t mind all the switching about will thoroughly enjoy The Suspect as it has an engaging writing style and plenty of surprises.

For the last month or so I've been quietly working on my end of the year blog post for my "best book of the year" and now I'm going to have to scrap everything I've already written because The Suspect has now taken top spot!
I mean wow what an incredible story, this one has everything you could ever want from a book. Normally not a fan of changing character perceptives but in The Suspect it was done with ease and kept the tale creeping on towards its thrilling end!
5/5

Lost an entire afternoon in this book, gripped me, couldn’t put it down until I knew how it ended! Another brilliant book from Fiona Barton!!

It was supposed to be the best time of their life: Alex and Rosie fly to Thailand after their A-levels to travel and party. But then, things go completely wrong and now the two girls are dead. What happened in the burnt-down-guesthouse? And where is that English boy who might have seen them last and is obviously closely linked to the fire? The parents fly to Bangkok and reporter Kate Waters comes with them to cover the story. But what they find out isn’t what they had expected: Kate’s son Jake is the wanted English boy who is now on the run and prime suspect in the murder of Alex and Rosie.

Again, Fiona Barton could well entertain me with a plot with many twists and turns and a story full of suspense. The narrative does not follow chronology and is told from alternating perspectives which I found great since it provides a lot more depth for the characters on the one hand and keeps suspense high on the other. In the end, the case is solved without leaving any questions open.

What I liked most were actually the very different characters who seemed all quite authentic to me: first of all the two young women who could hardly be more different. Quiet Alex who wants to see the country and learn about the culture and Rosie just expecting to have a good time partying. That this combination wouldn’t work out too long is pretty obvious. The girls behave like typical teenagers do on their first trip alone far away from the parents, they are careless and easily fall prey to all kind of wrong-doers. Also their mothers are portrayed in convincing ways, especially Jenny who is very bitter after her husband left her alone with the daughter.

Most interesting of course is Kate whose role changes massively throughout the story: from the nosy reporter she herself becomes the target of the press and has to endure what is written about her boy without being able of doing anything against it.

Altogether, a perfectly pitched thriller that keeps you reading on and on and on to find out the truth about what happened in Thailand.

Another warning kind of novel from Fiona Barton. The writing and detail are excellent and given her journalist background that's no surprise. She's there to twist and wring her characters through so you can see them in all their glory and their infamy. No one in the novel is particularly likeable but it's interesting the way the author questions your moral fibre from the start ( and certainly the end!)

I'm not going to give anything away of course, but I was shaking my head from the word go. When you go backpacking, or stay in someone else's country, you don't do anything these girls do - of the rest of the backpackers. They go to the seediest place, stay where one girl worries is safe enough, questions everything yet does nothing. You would hope travellers would be aware of how to travel nowadays. I feel like a granny in comparison to what I did when I went backpacking! There's no real sense of it being in Bangkok - the heat, that sense of the excitement of travel etc was lacking for me.

Apart from that - I'm still not sure how I would describe the ending. It will divide readers I think and that's the point of the novel. What would you do to protect your child? It was interesting to think Kate was the one investigating the missing girls and became embroiled in her own mystery.

A novel to give your teenager before they head off to their own adventure.