I liked the premise of this book, Following the death of her husband Alex and her family move to a small village and her son joins the local football team, the Tenderton Tigers.
The story centres around the other parents associated with the team, and their secrets which are many!
There are a lot of characters, a lot of football, all overshadowed by the witchy history of the village and I’m afraid I found it all a bit disjointed and busy.
I’m not a parent or a football lover but perhaps if I was this book may have had more appeal.
I give it 3.5/5
Thank you to NetGalley and Bookouture for the advance read.
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I enjoyed this for the most part, but found it a bit lacking in some areas. I think the characters could have been built on a little more and the fact that the author mentions Riker's boys having their heads shoved into the Pool of Sorrow 'like animals' really put me off. Why should animals have their heads held underwater? I really think it's time some authors start being a little more thoughtful and considerate of the world we live in and the fact that not all readers appreciate reading about cruelty or the ridiculous notion that badly-behaved humans are akin to animals, when let's be honest, they really are not.

Other than that it started off well but then became a bit sloppy and far-fetched. What are the odds so many people in one small village harbour such dastardly and dark secrets? Well, anything is possible I suppose, but... And the whole Fraser/Rich business seemed a little confusing. Fraser, I thought, really belonged at the bottom of the ravine.

Thanks to NetGalley, the author and publisher for my ARC.

This was only an ok read for me . Alex and her thirteen year old son move to a new town after her husband dies. Alex finds it hard to settle into the new home and the effort in starting to make new friendships whereas her son Harry takes to the whole situation with enthusiasm. The story then revolves around the people who live in this community and how their lives effect one another. I really didn't warm to any of the characters and the dramas that were happening in the story did not really grab me in any way. I just found the book a bit slow and not that engaging. 3 stars. Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review

I absolutely loved this thriller. I had no idea most of the book what was going on but couldn’t wait to find out. Great plot and characters. I highly recommend this book.

The Parents by Claire Seeber is a British thriller that focuses on a group of parents and their teen boys at a football club. Not American football, but soccer, as we Americans call it. At first, I thought it would be about the petty affairs and maybe a financial misdealing within the club. I was very wrong. Set in a small town that drives tourism by focusing on its past pursuit of witches, this is a perfect fall read. Ir if you are a fan of all things across the pond, an everyday read. Set in contemporary times, it reads like you're being told the story by a friend. Thoroughly enjoyable.

thank you Netgalley and Bookouture for an arc of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Nearly DNF'd this one. I found the beginning to be very blah. I wasn't intrigued by the characters and I didn't learn enough about them to like them. The first 50 pages are good but then things are very juvenile. I found it lacked depth and suspense in the plot department, which disappoints me because it's labelled as a thriller. I think if I had learned more about Patti and Alex and there was stronger plot development, I would have been more interested in seeing how things unfold than what I was. The ending was a bit too much for me - over complicated and a little busy.

Perfect for the Gossip Girl or Big Little Lies fans out there.

A domestic thriller about the parents of a boys football team whose lives are turned upside down when someone starts to reveal their sordid secrets. Can they discover who has it in for them and why?

A good story with twists and turns along the way which made for an easy and entertaining read.

Thank you to Netgalley for an advanced copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
A great read right up my street. Great plot, good characters and well written. Recommended.

A story told in 2 person narrative, Alex, newbie to the small town and Pattie,long time resident and peacekeeper. This book is full of secrets, and domestic worries, and a hell of a lot of soccer.
Enjoyable twists, well thought out characters, and a good mystery made this a fun read. A little too much of the word babs,sugar,lover, for my tastes and a little too much of the actual soccer games, but a solid 4 stars nonetheless.

My second book by Claire Seeger and I enjoyed joining the mad world of football parents - or in this case, the bewitching world as the storyline takes place in a village famous for olden day witchcraft.
Told by multiple narrators, who are parents of the Tigers team of boys, the story unfolds when a mysterious and anonymous blog starts to reveal terrible secrets about each of the parents in turn…what are the villagers hiding?

This is an incredible thriller, it was so twisty and suspenseful and had me on the edge of my seat I couldnt put it down and more importantly I didnt want too. Such a good book

I have previously read '24 Hours' by author Claire Seeber and really enjoyed it so I was looking forward to her latest offering. This is an exciting read with some interesting characters and plenty of twists and turns.

Widower Alex, her children thirteen year old son Harry and daughter Iris have moved house to Primrose Cottage following the tragic death of her husband due to a hiking accident. They are hoping for a fresh start and better luck but it is not long before Alex is wondering if they have made the right decision to move. Everything starts off positive when Harry joins the local football team and Alex makes friends with the parents who come along to watch. But problems are not far away starting with someone anonymously exposing secrets about everyone in the group. Tensions rise and the real characters are exposed culminating with one of the parents being found dead at the end of a party.

This is a good read but not up to the standard of the other books I have read by this author. 3.5 star rating.

I would like to thank both Net Galley and Bookouture for supplying a copy of this novel in exchange for an honest review.

(2.5) Thank you to NetGalley and Bookouture for sending me an eARC! For a thriller, I didn't find this that thrilling. It was a mama drama with a random dead body thrown in at the end. I wish I had been more engaged with the story, because I really liked the characters, especially Alex, but the plot just didn't do it for me.

Thank you #Netgalley for the advanced copy!

In this novel we follow two leading ladies, Alex and Patti. We alternate from each other their perspectives in a small town, both of their sons on the local sports team. Alex is a new transplant to the city, she lost her husband a year before and moved here with her two children, each coping with the death in different ways. Patti has been a long term resident who always knows the hot gossip and runs the local salon. When their sons play on the same sports team, Patti tries to incorporate Alex into the mom world. Little did she know all the drama that came along with that. Rumors, lies and betrayal riddle the city on top of Alex still trying to understand what really happened with her husbands death. So many twists and turns until the very end! I also enjoyed the epilogue to see where everybody stood after the big events :)

A mother/son duo move to a new area to try to escape the grief of their late husband/father. The town quickly becomes different than it seemed originally. Secrets spread leading to murder and a whole slew of town drama that goes along with that. I did not love this book, but it was a unique storyline. Thank you to NetGalley and Bookouture for a copy of this book for an honest review.

Thank you NetGalley and Bookouture for the arc of this book. This book did not turn out to be what I thought it would be. First of all, there were some many characters (many with unfamiliar names!) it was hard to keep everyone straight. Yes, I think there was a list of everyone at the start of the book, but in an ebook it's harder to keep flipping back and forth. Then the story unfolded slowly, so slowly that I started to lose interest. I kept reading/skimming to see if it got better. Yes, the end was a surprise and made it worth reading. I will say some of the idioms/language was very British and unfamiliar to me, which did not make this an easy read. 2.5 stars rounded up to three, mainly for the ending!

I requested this book as it’s pitched as a thriller. Sadly it reads much more like a chick-lit fiction novel and I really couldn’t get into it at all. There’s a large number of characters, with an list of who relates to who right at the start. This never works well anyway in an ebook. I didn’t like the setting of the football club, it didn’t work for me at all and overall it was just too filled with irrelevant waffle details about characters chats that I tend to find in chick-lit as opposed to any real character development. DNF at 20%.

As a high school counselor I was drawn to this title plus I loved the cover (yep I do judge a book but its cover!)
Alex and her son move to England after her husband died in an accident. They are adjusting to their new neighbors and the son has joined the neighborhood weekend football team. Soon someone starts to reveal secrets of parents which then leads to a murder after a party.
This is a story of parent jealously and rivalry.

I went into this sure I was going to enjoy this story. It wasn’t the wow read I was expecting ~ doesn’t mean it wasn’t good!

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Want to thank NetGalley and Bookouture for this eGalley. This file has been made available to me before publication in an early form for an honest professional review.
Publishing Release Date scheduled for October 25, 2021

Well, it all happens with the parents of the Under 14’s football squad at Tenderton Tigers in Kent with an abundance of testosterone on display as various parents jostle to manage the team instead of Neil Forth. Pushy ambitious parents who give no quarter, there are rows, drunken debacles and worse. Patti Taylor’s son Ethan plays for the team and she tells her story warts and all and as she’s lived in the village for some years she gives us quite a lot of the low down on its residents. Then there’s Alex, recently widowed and returned from the USA, mightily strapped for cash and living in Primrose Cottage thanks to her generous brother in law. Her son Harry also starts playing for the team ... Alex tells her story.

The book starts well with Patti’s narrative offering some dark humour, the writing is lively and engaging with insight into shenanigans in Tenderton. Things take a toxic turn when a vlogger begins to reveal some very unsavoury information which provokes a lot of tension within the village, trust is lost and the atmosphere descends into frequent malice. The Kent village setting is a good one with the events set against a good backdrop of seventeenth century witchcraft and the surrounding area adds to this especially the woods. Alex’s story emerges a bit at a time with puzzling revelations and her storyline is a good one. So far so good and it is good until about the half way point and then it starts to get messy. The pacing becomes uneven which is ok, it doesn’t have to be rip roaringly fast the whole time but what starts to happen is too much is thrown into the plot. How likely is it that so many parents would harbour such dark secrets???? There’s so much going on my head starts to spin and I’m sorry to say it fizzles out at the end ... with so much early promise I’m not expecting a whimper! There are a lot of characters to get your head around and some feel a bit stereotypical. Patti’s seemingly constant use of ‘babs’ at the end of every sentence and a lot of ‘mates’ from the blokes gets on my nerves!!!

Overall, I’m disappointed as I’ve read the author before and liked her books and this started so very well. I loved it until half way and then it gets overloaded.
P.S. There are quite a few scenes where the team play a game, this may not suit all but as I’m a footie fan I do enjoy these sections!!

With thanks to NetGalley and especially to Bookouture for the much appreciated arc in return for an honest review.

Thanks for the advanced copy, I really enjoyed this book, I could not put it down. I found myself having to concentrate on the characters but enjoyed how it developed especially from the middle of the book onwards.

Recommended read and very descriptive.