I loved this story. It was quite dark and disturbing in parts, but that just made it all the more exciting and perplexing. I felt strongly about all of the characters and I was invested in what happened to them. While this is certainly not a book for everyone, I have recommended it to others and will continue to do so.

I feel like I ran a marathon after reading this book! The twists and turns had me absolutely speed-reading - I was desperate to find out what happened. It was difficult to keep track of the characters, but once you get acquainted with them, you get invested.

When a group of expectant parents come together to celebrate and congratulate each other, the overall feeling should be joy. But this group of people are throughly unlikeable. Claire McGowan has populated this story line with some truly horrible people with so many secrets that it's sometimes hard to keep track. But someone gets murdered and someone helped them over the ledge onto the concrete below. While the story line is not unique, these characters definitely are.

Claire McGown invested considerable skill into these characters. Each stands out and contributes to the overall "feel" of the book. You can't quite figure out who did it because it's hard not to see each of them getting a sharp rap or two. Good book, quick read, interesting outcome

This book is hard to rate because it was okay, but not great. I think she was going for kind of a Big Little Lies type story but failed. There was just too much going on and the story got bogged down in too many little details. Overall I didn't enjoy it much. 3 stars.

THE PUSH by Claire McGowan

We are introduced to six expecting couples in the first chapter.

And if those were the only characters that would be fine but you have all of the supporting characters to account for.

The entirety of the book is trying to decipher who is who and who said what. Who wore what and trying to remember who is how far along in their pregnancy, who is married and who is using surrogates. Little useless details you’re trying to decipher between. And all it’s doing it taking me out of the story.

I think the author was trying for a TRULY MADLY GUILTY situation and missed the mark. There is an event, we know someone has died, we know who was there, and we’re learning what happened. The unraveling has to be interesting. The unraveling, the happening, is the point.

There should be little nuggets of aha moments as we’re learning what happened leading up to and during that evening. But in this book so much time is spent building the characters that the story is neglected.

If anything this book is too long. There are way too many characters. They are too similar as hard as the author tried to differentiate between them. And I didn’t care not one little bit what happened to any of them.

I also wanted to note that there was poor thought and care given to race dynamics in this book. There were several points where race was used as a clarifier and it was never checked. Which unfortunately left a impression overall.

Thanks to Netgalley and Amazon Publishing UK, Thomas & Mercer for the advanced copy!

THE PUSH…⭐️⭐️

Exciting book to read. Great plot. It was a fast paced book. A great who done it? Very well written. Had me on the edge of my seat. Definitely worth a read

That ending?! Wow! Finally an ending I didn't see coming. Goodness, I sure hope there is a follow up to this book!

I enjoyed this, took me a while to get the hang of all the characters, names and backstory but once I did, I thought it was really entertaining.
The story is told from each of six couples perspectives, both from their anti natal classes and then later, the party arranged by the wealthy showy Monica.
There were several occasions where I thought I’d worked it all out and some of it proved to be right, but there were still plenty of twists to keep me going.
I’ll definitely be reading more by this author.

This book revolves around 6 couples (yes it was hard to keep track of all names but eventually I got them!)
6 couples from a baby group get together forcefully to celebrate the birth of their babies, there's an unfortunate incident when one of the attendees has had a fall and dies.
It takes a bit for the reader to know who is dead (but it's kind of guessable as the detective progresses with her interviews).
This was an engaging book, kept me interested but I had to take a break when there was too much of details about one of the characters difficult pregnancy etc., - just got a little too tedious to know about that instead of the story progressing but the author did a good job of adding a bit of suspense even there so all in all it was a good read.
DS Alison Hegarty the one investigating the death is also dealing with infertility issues so that was kind of a parallel track but didn't get closed!

4-star read - thanks to Netgalley, Amazon Publishing UK & Claire McGowan for approving the ARC

I had a hard time getting into this story. I started it and stopped and came back to it. By the end, I can say I liked it but only a little. It was ok.

This is a title that really sounded good at one point but my tastes changed and now I’m no longer interested.

I like Claire McGowans thrillers but this was not one of her best. The characters were unlikable and the narrative too slow. Thanks to netgalley and the publisher for the arc.

This book chronicles a group of very different women in. a prenatal group as they approach a life-changing event. However, the life changing event here is a murder, not just the births of their children. The author brings us back and forth from before the party and murder to after the party and murder and we find out that all the couples in the story have something to hide. It is up to the detectives to separate the truth and the lies in order to determine the murderer.

I enjoyed this book , I sent. Copy to my daughter as soon as it was available. As a mother, it gave me a great deal to think about. It was suspenseful, yet I had sympathy for everyone involved with this deeply troubled family.

This book was really good! There were a lot of twists and turns that kept me guessing. I thought the killer was each character at some point.

Six couples and their newborn babies. Someone falls. Or are they pushed? That is what DS Alison Hegarty needs to figure out. All of the characters having reason to do it and secrets to hide. The book will keep you captivated and guessing until the end!

Eh. I wasn't enthralled by this story or the characters. It was an okay read. I think I might recommend something different for a friend.

I flew through this book, with a well-thought-out plot and really believable characters. would definitely recommend it!

This was very much not the book for me. Way to vulgar and nasty and not the good kind of nasty. Total let down as I have read from this author before and loved her writing but not this sadly.

Six couples, part of a pre-natal class gather at the swanky home of one of the couples after the birth of their babies to celebrate and someone falls from a balcony to their death. Though it appears to have been merely a "fall", an intrepid Detective Sergeant Alison Hegarty suspects that might not be the entire story. And of course, she's right. The 'fall' was in fact a 'push' but there are so many suspects, and so many secrets ...

As the story develops, it's clear that the attendees at the party all have something to hide, so they're not particularly forthcoming with the police. This wasn't exactly a locked room mystery, but definitely a close cousin. The perpetrator is obviously someone who was at the party, but the mystery is that as the action develops we realize that almost everyone has a something akin to a motive. I listened to this one, and was never bored, but also never quite as engaged as I might have been. We got the POVs of at least one half of all six couples, which was interesting, but made it tough to become particularly attached to any single person. The person to whom we should have been most attached---because she was the only POV in first person---was somewhat annoying and difficult to relate to. Jax's (that's her name) conflict was that she was a thirty-seven-year-old with a much younger (twenty-four-year-old) partner, Aaron, who is also very good-looking; so most of her internal monologue involved agonizing over what people must think of her, or about how "ridiculous" she must seem. Oh ... and there's also the mysterious happenings at work and at home, that she irrationally, decides not to share with Aaron.

Apart from investigating the crime, the DS is undergoing her own challenge---she and her partner want to get pregnant and can't. So, while she watches these new parents lie and evade, she also envies, relates to, and studies them, not just as suspects, but as people who have the one thing she wants most.

The narrator was great, and the story was good. I recommend for a quick mystery fix.

Was the fall from the balcony an accident? Was there a murder committed? This mystery involves questions of fertility and pregnancies and complications. Mixed in is the possibility of murder. It’s a good read.