Thank you to Netgalley, Avon Books UK and the Author Katerina Diamond for an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.
OH MY GOSH! All I can say is WOW! What an awesome book.
This book is the epitome of a psychological thriller.
Never ending twists and turns.
My first read by this Author and certainly won't be my last!

This is a very good book to read. I couldn't decide whether to give it 4 or 5 stars but decided on rounding down. The book offers alternate chaptering (not sure if chapter can be used as a verb!) between 'now' - Flick's return to Sidmouth and 'then' - details of the build up to what happened 15 years ago and why Flick left Sidmouth so abruptly.
The book is very clever and has a number of good twists and turns. I think I may have spoiled the book a little for myself as I had surprisingly managed to work out/guess the main twist at a fairly early point.
I have not read any of Katerina's previous books but I would certainly like to do so in the future.
Highly recommended

This is an amazing read. I was hooked from the beginning trying to work out who the murderer was. Definitely did not see the twist at the end coming - it’s a rabbit out the hat moment! I’ll definitely be recommending this book to my customers.

The Heatwave # Netgallery
It's 5.43 am and I have just finished reading the heatwave. It's another book that is the fight pace that keeps you wanting more and mote. I don't know if done of you get !like myself. I am tired and if at just one more chapter,at the end of that chapter you quickly glance at the click however you say again just one more chapter. Knowing full well when yor finish that chapter you are going to say it again and again, with a book so gripping like this one you just keep kidding yourself each time you say it. The twists and turns just keep coming like you have been whizzed around on the Walters in fairground after Tim tells Jasmine what he thinks it's not surprising she really is a bit messed up not wanting it to be right, there are times when you think no I i know who it is only to find yourself being wrong again. Although I neververw expected the final twists so once again another cracking book From such a brilliant writer Katrina diamind. Ps I am making a few brilliant

The Heatwave is a fantastic British mystery/thriller that kept me reading late into the night. I haven't read anything by Katerina Diamond before and have to admit I had never heard of her. After reading Heatwave I want to read all of her books! Felicity, a mum of two, returns to her hometown after she finds out a teenage girl has gone missing. Felicity hasn't been home since she was sixteen. She left town, never to return, after a teenage girl from her school disappeared. Somehow the disappearances are linked and Felicity wants answers. With thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for my ARC.

I had heard very good things about this author so I jumped at the chance to read her new stand alone novel. I was not disappointed.
The story alternates between a very hot summer during which a young girl goes missing (from the perspective of a teenage girl) and the present day in which her (now grown up) best friend tries to unravel the truth about what happened back then after another girl disappears in similar circumstances. It's fair to say that every time you think you know what's going on you soon discover that you've jumped to conclusions.
I did deduct 1 star for the adult man seducing teenage girls as I felt it didn't seem to fit with his character in later chapters.

Another great book from this author. This time we follow Felicity who is travelling back to the place she grew up in and left 16 years ago due to the disappearance of a young girl. As the story echos one of her past she is forced to confront her demons and finally face up to the past as she tries to solve the mystery not only of the current missing child but also what happened 16 years ago. Are these disappearances connected and if so what is the link to Felicity. Dark and twisted it will keep you hooked till the very end.

A book set in two different time periods, then and now. I found I enjoyed the ‘then’ elements far more than the ‘now’ as I found Felicity’s narrative quite annoying at times. It was ok when she was dealing with the here and now but there were too many hints and vague comments for me. I presume it was to add to the suspense but I find too much dramatic tension without any substance rather off putting.
It was not enough to make me stop reading though, just made me roll my eyes although it did improve in the last third of the book.
The ending was good however and tied together all the different elements. Overall a fairly easy to read book with mystery and twists. I would rate it around 3 and a half stars.

Tense chilling Katerina Diamond is an author’ who never fails.A true page turner multi layered kept me guessing to the end.A thriller Inwill be recommending.#netgalley#avonbooksuk

Thanks Netgalley and the Publisher. I really like this author and this book did not disappoint, fast paced, page turning thriller that will have you hooked all the way through.

I think I set my expectations too high for this book.

I'm a HUGE fan of Katerina's Detective Imogen Grey series, it's one of my favourite series ever so I suppose subconsciously I was expecting the same wow factor that each one of those gives me.

I also think the fact that this is my go to genre might have ruined things for me because you come to expect a certain 'pizzazz' from a physiological thriller and this just didnt quite hit the mark.

It was quite slow going and didnt overly excite me, there wasn't much suspense and in all honesty I didnt feel a connection to any of the characters, it felt more plot driven than character driven so they weren't as developed as I'd have liked.

Now don't get me wrong, its extremely well written, easy to read and flows seamlessly, like all of this authors books and I'm 100% sure that if it's not your usual genre or you haven't read the authors previous works you will LOVE it, I think I just prefer the series of books instead of the stand alone (by this author!)

Also a small point that niggled me, i found the cover and title quite misleading. The title is quite irrelevant as apart from a small mention of a heatwave and the fact is was the summer it doesn't really fit with the story and the cover reminds me of some exotic location with a good old murder mystery.. but that's purely my opinion obviously!

Personally I think it's more a mystery than a thriller but would be a good book for a first in this genre.

3*

Thanks to netgalley and Avon Books UK for the ARC.

I am left speechless! Brilliantly written suspenseful thriller! The story jumps from past to present with ease. I can not believe how many twists and turns this book had. If you have not read this book, then why not?!?! Go! Buy it now, I promise you will not be disappointed.

Katerina Diamond has very quickly become one of my favourite authors and when I found out that the new book would be outside of the realms of the regular Gray and Miles series I was intrigued and thankfully I was not disappointed.

Following 2 separate timelines we meet Felicity and Jasmine, two best friends from Devon, whose lives change dramatically over one long hot summer. Set in the present Felicity is completely shell shocked when she learns of the disappearance of a teenage girl from her childhood hometown. She knows that this is not just a one off and becomes intent on returning to the past to try and get to the bottom of this mystery but how does her past life have any impact on what is happening now? Jasmine's narration, on the otherhand, takes us back in time to the summer of the first disapperance in their home town and introduces to the mysterious and suspicous Tim. Jasmine is automatically suspicious of Tim when her parents move him in as a lodger. Could he have something to do with the disappearances? As both timelines reveal more and more detail suddenly the story twists in the most spectacular way and the true story is revealed in the most shocking way.

As always Katerina Diamond knows how to keep the reader hooked and hanging on her every word. I mean you get a twist and then the twist twists again! Bravo! Definitely made my lockdown a lot more interesting.

This was not the best of Katerina Diamonds books but I still enjoyed it, thank you netgalley for giving me. The opportunity to read an early edition of this book.
Felicity ran away from her home to escape the terrible things she knew.
Sixteen years later she is married and with two children, but felicity knew she had to go back to her childhood home to,see if she could put right all the terrible things she knew.
On her return felicity had to face her nightmares and try to find the missing girl.

The intrigue began immediately you started reading this novel so that you wanted to continue reading to find out what was going on.This story has the formula where we are moved between past and present .This is presented as distinct now and then chapters in the book.I liked this clear separation of the time scales because it meant there was no difficulty in knowing where you were in time.The main character Felicity is drawn back to her family town in Devon when a girl disappears/is abducted under similar circumstances to what happened 16 years ago when she was a teenager..She thought she had left that life long ago to begin a new life with a husband and new family.There are obviously secrets from that time which she has hidden from her husband and perhaps suppressed from her consciousness She feels the need to travel to this town to investigate what has happened.You know from what is said there is unfinished business there.A lot of soul searching about leaving her new life in the Lake District is given, which is useful in setting the scene for the tense situation she finds herself in on arriving in Devon.You know there is more to the situation than is being present on first reading.The thing I did not like was the speed with which things escalated near the end of the book.Time had been spent setting the scene on the two time scales then suddenly there is closure on a very gruesome and unsettling situation.Not sure that the ending is satisfactory for me.Perhaps there is another novel hidden away as this one sets the scene for future developments..

Wow! This is one gripping psychological thriller! I absolutely devoured this in an afternoon, seriously could not put it down. Katerina Diamond’s stand alone The Heatwave is just as intense and twisty as her Miles and Grey series. You need to read this book, you really do. This book deserves to be a massive hit.

The story begins with Felicity watching a news story about a missing 16 year old girl in her hometown of Sidmouth in Devon. A hometown that she never talks about. She immediately packs her bags and leaves her husband and kids and heads back to the beachside town. She is convinced that this disappearance is somehow connected to her and wha happened when she was 16..

From here the story jumps between the present with Felicity looking into what happens to the girl and the past, told by Jasmine, Felicity’s best friend growing up. Slowly the truth of why she has returned becomes clear. The demons of her past are coming back to haunt her, a past that she has tried she hard to forget.

Thanks to Avon Books UK and NetGalley for my advanced copy of this book to read. All opinions are my own and are in no way biased

Wow!
I felt that at the start of this book I kept getting easily distracted, it did take a bit of time for me to start getting drawn in and understand what was happening.
The book flips between Now and Then and pieces of the puzzle gradually start falling into place.
Then everything is blown out of the water and it just gets crazy!!!
Twist after twist until your head is spinning - I absolutely loved the second half of the book when I couldn’t put it down. Well worth the build up to get to the point of complete free fall into psychotic thriller world!!!! Yes a new genre called psychotic would fit the characters in this novel quite well!!
I would recommend this as a fabulous summer read and rated it 4⭐️.

This is an odd mystery in that it is difficult to discern the ending...usually this doesn’t happen. The protagonist returns home to face the ghosts that formed her life...the guilt and the memories. As the reader journeys with her, there are surprises at every turn. Although it would have been better to k or more about her present life, the story is totally in the past. Characters come and go and one doesn’t get to know any of them well. That being said, this is a mystery that makes the reader want to know more.

The story is told from two different timelines, present by Felicity and past by Jasmine. It definitely played with my head as how those two timelines will merge together. Felicity decided to go back to her hometown when she heard about missing girl in the news just like what happened sixteen years ago.
Absolute brilliant story !!!

My first book by this author and it certainly won't be my last. I was so invested in this story and I was shocked with the twists and turns. Shockingly good.