what would you do if you woke up on your 40th birthday and everything what you have worked for loving husband and two children in a few hours everything changes .that is what happens to Erin a birthday party .and one thing changes everything this story very addictive .there are lies deceit and big secrets ,and very sad in parts I so recommend a must read

First I would like to thank Netgalley for an advanced copy of "The girl you have away" this is my first book by Jess Ryder. I look forward to reading more books by this author. I am a huge fan of psychological thrillers. I am also adopted and was given away at birth so I found the book interesting.
t gives readers both sides of the story, revealing both the birth mother and the adopted child's feelings surrounding the adoption and after the secret comes out. But it goes deeper, by considering the effects of secrets on other connected relationships, and damage that goes deeper than keeping secrets. If you like secrets,suspense and scandal this book is for you. I enjoyed reading the book and will look for more titles by Jess Ryder.

I really did try to get through this book. I made myself get to 40% but I still wasn’t feeling it. I just found it quite boring to be honest, and the writing style just wasn’t up my street. I found it to be quite over exaggerated in the most strange places, and a bit unrealistic.

I flew through this book after the first 20%, I was reading at every feasible opportunity. What’s with that ending though??! I need at least another 2 chapters to tie up loose ends!
4 strong stars

The Girl You Gave Away is a suspenseful read by Jess Ryder. Erin is celebrating with friends and family at her 40th birthday party. She has a good life, a husband and children she loves, friends, and a successful business. She has secrets though, one of the biggest ones may explode everything she holds dear.

Erin got pregnant at 14 and the child was adopted. No contact between the two in 25 years and now her "daughter" is dropping off birthday cards at her party. What does this young woman want? A relationship? Or are her motives for getting touch darker?

The book was suspenseful and I really wanted to know who Erin was and how her daughter Jade's appearance would affect her family. I didn't like that Erin's friends and family let her down when she needed them most. They treated her like a pariah, as if she was the worst kind of evil. This treatment made me wonder if Erin was really the person she presented herself to be or did she deserve this abandonment?

For me the ending was too open ended. I wanted more details, more results, I didn't want to decide for myself how the story would turn out. Too many questions were left hanging. That said, I enjoyed the book very much. I just needed more details before "The End."

Going in I thought this book had a great concept. I was excited to know who sent the envelope and how the fallout was going to happen. As a reader I was able to anticipate all of the twists and turns so nothing really shocked me as much as I would have liked. I also felt like the ending left me with a lot more questions that were not answered through out the whole book. What happened to their marriage? What became of Jade? Did she get her money back? What other types of things did Holly do to make Asha say she lived a double life?

Thank you to netgalley and Bookouture for allowing me to read an ARC of this book in exchange for my honest review.

This book was not as interesting as it seems from the blurb. It started off well and seemed interesting but it lost pace at about 25%. There are a few mistakes in the book with regards to the character names and it makes it impacts the plot unfortunately. I don’t think this qualifies as a thriller, the plot isn’t great and the characters are absolutely not relatable. It was hard to care what happened to them. When I was a child we had this game, it had 16 tiles with different pictures on it, you picked them randomly and narrated a story based on the picture you picked first- used to be a lot of fun but needless to say the story didn’t always make sense. Unfortunately this book felt like that. Like the author picked up tiles of attempted murder, blackmail, kidnapping, bad relationships, mental health issues etc. and just put them together to form a plot. The ending too was not satisfying at all.

Thank you to NetGalley and Jess Ryder, for allowing me an ARC of the book for a voluntary review.

There really was a lot going on in this book, and while I didn't enjoy the ending at all, I did enjoy the book itself.

The story is very well written, suspenseful, full of wonder and amazement, and sometimes anger and I enjoyed it! 4 out of 5. Can't wait for the next one by Jess Ryder.

This book is about a child who was given away to adoption finds her mother and the events that follow. The story proceeds in predictable lines and feels sluggish at times. The characters don’t evoke any sympathy. There doesn’t seem to be any bonding in any of the relationships. The conclusion is sudden and doesn’t fit. I didn’t feel it to be a psychological thriller. Sorry.

Erin has been keeping a secret for a long time. When the truth comes out her life blows up. There are a lot of twists in this book that I didn’t see coming. It held my interest til the end. I have to say I didn’t like the way it ended, I wanted more of a resolution to the story than the book gave me. That is my reason for the 3* rating. Thank you to net galley for an advanced readers copy.

Big fan of Jess Ryder and her psychological thrillers and had great expectations of this new one. Started great when a daughter, given up by a child mother, comes back unexpectedly and the havoc is terrible for all concerned. It’s difficult to become really entrenched in a book where you do not like nor care about any of the characters and you keep reading, expecting a change. Perhaps I was expecting too much. Rather disappointed in the outcome.

The Girl You Gave Away is fantastic!

I found the story shocking (in a good way) and I had to put it down at points because I found it so dark, intense and explosive. The storyline stays strong throughout and moves at perfect pace.

Highly recommended.

There was a lot going on in this book. Didn't keep me as interested as I thought it would. Wasn't a fan of the ending. Was a good read over all with twists that I didn't see coming. 3.5 stars rounded up.


Thanks to net galley and the publisher for an early release of this book.

3.8/5

I enjoyed this book i was not a fan of the ending and the gross relationship/scenes in the flashback chapters..
Overall this book had good secrets and really good twists and turns and towards the end of the book one thing which i will not say SHOCKED me and i was not expecting it.
If you like secrets,suspense and scandal this book is for you.
Besides a few weird things this book was very good.

This book had me hooked that I was up until the wee hours of the morning to find out how it all ended. The story is set in the year 2020 about a mother named Erin who finds a letter from her daughter that she gave up, Jade, on the day of her birthday. The chapters flip from the current year to the past as it retells the story of how she got pregnant and the reason as to how she gave her baby up. The book started a little slow for me, but as it ramped up with certain twists, it just kept on coming and I did not want to stop reading. So many twists and turns had me on my toes to the answers of "who did it?" and "omg what's going to happen next"! I definitely put myself in Erin's shoes and was living her story, which is why I gave this book a 4/4.5 starts versus a complete 5 stars. There were certain parts of the story where I was just thinking, there's no way someone could be that forgiving, or there's no way that a relationship can just mend and push through while certain circumstances were happening. I do rate this book pretty high as the story teller was very keen on detail that I was imaging every single account and could visualize it happening. The story on all fronts was wonderful- from the main characters to all the supporting characters in the book. I would definitely recommend this book to anyone looking for a great thriller novel! Thank you, NetGalley, for allowing me to read this book. It did NOT disappoint!

Although this is an uncorrected ARC copy there were a few errors, two of which are below.
The book says Erin and Amy go to see where Jade's mother lived, but it was Jade and Amy going together.
When Jade thought Amy had planned things she wonders if it was because she thought Erin was a rich businesswoman but not as rich as Erin's adoptive parents, but it was Jade's adoptive parents who were rich.
These are careless errors and there were more.
The whole book was not plausible and a psychological thriller this isn't. It just got more ridiculous as it went on.
Too many coincidences.
Child born late to Irish/Catholic parents who are cold and unloving, child suddenly goes off the rails drinking and having unprotected sex with an older man. Gets pregnant, now there's a surprise.
The baby is adopted straight away.
Mother becomes an alcoholic, dries out and turns her life around.
Twenty five years later adopted daughter finds her birth mother.
Adopted daughter just happens to have Foetal Alcohol Syndrome, ADHD and a host of other problems and plays on these problems.
A whole load of other things are thrown in for good measure, blackmail, kidnap, attempted murder etc
Individually these things happen, but everyone of them? No, not realistic at all.

Thank you to NetGalley and the Publisher for my ARC in return for an honest review.

What happens when you give a child up for adoption, but don't tell your new family and she finds you? What if she has resentment and isn't what you expected, yet you are the only one who can see that? What if she didn't have the life that you thought she would when you gave her up, and she sees that your kids have everything she missed?

That's this book with alot of twists and turns and unexpected wows. The book alternates between Jade the mother and Erin the daughter she gave up. The writing is smooth and the book isn't choppy, so it is a well written read.

This book is at the top of it's game as a psychological suspense thriller and I think will make quite a splash in this years books.

I have read most of Jess Ryder's books and this one does not disappoint!

A story about many secrets. Adoption. Family. Friends. Betrayal...

I kept guessing as to whether Jade was really the daughter Erin "gave away".?????

A lot of powerful drama and superb suspense definitely lead to a 5 star rating!!!

Many Thanks to Bookouture and NetGalley for one of this year's best reads!

WOW. I finished this book last night and have not stopped thinking about it since. It was very different from what I expected, given that the short book description listed on NetGalley does not reveal much about the plot. But, in this case, it's a good thing.

I liked that the book switched back and forth between a few perspectives, both past and present, to give a better backstory. I also liked that the book took a new position/outlook on mental illness - a lot of the time, mental illness is portrayed in kind of a throwaway manner in books, usually just as an explanation for a character's actions. But I felt that this book not only used a unique mental/neurological illness that is not typically written about, but also used this illness in a better way than many fictional books would (yes, it was an explanation for behavior, but also tied in a lot to the main story of the book). All in all, it felt like a new perspective and a new story, when many mysteries and thrillers I've read lately all feel like different iterations of the same story.

I felt that a few storylines were left hanging at the end of the book, but that was not necessarily a problem. In most cases, it kept me thinking about the story, and thinking "what if" about those storylines, rather than being upset that a storyline was just dropped. Overall, I enjoyed the story, and will continue to think about it for a while.

Having read all Jess Ryder’s previous books was excited to read this one, it did not disappoint. Was gripped from the first chapter, kept me guessing, plenty of twists, did not see the ending coming. Definitely worth reading.