An exceptionally crafted psychological mystery about three sisters growing up in foster care. As adults the sisters are summoned back to their childhood home and forced to wade through their traumatic past. This book kept my guessing until the bitter end! Hepworth did a fantastic job of weaving the characters lives together to build suspense. I appreciated the multiple points of view.

This was my first Sally Hepworth book and it won't be my last.

Hepworth’s books are always fun, bingeable reads and this was no exception! I loved the nonlinear timeline and multiple POVs. The mystery had me guessing the whole way through and moments that had my jaw dropping. Highly recommend for your next addicting thriller!

5 Stars!

I loved this, I was absolutely hooked on this book… I could not put it down. This has now become one of my favourite thrillers of all time. A personal preference of mine in thrillers is that there is at least one individual I like and I am rooting for, and I definitely rooted for the three main girls in this one. And that Miss. Fairchild chick… She is on my list of enemies!

Thank you netgalley for the arc of this book. This is my first Sally Hepworth book, and it absolutely did not disappoint. I was intrigued the entire way through, and all my theories were not correct! 5/5 I will be recommending this to everyone

I partially read this on my Kindle, and partially listened on audio. The narration on the audio book was excellent! The only upshot for the Kindle read is that if you're listening to the audio over a longer period of time, I think it's a bit easier to track the Kindle version. Overall, this wasn't my favorite Sally Hepworth book. I didn't quite connect with any of the characters, and thought it felt more like a drama than a thriller/mystery. But overall, I still enjoyed it!

Three young women, who were in the same foster care home when they were young girls, have been asked to return to the police department in that town because bones were found when the foster care home was demolished. The young women, Jessica, Norah and Alicia, have been close since they left the foster care home and consider each of their sisters. The story is told in a then and now format with multiple POVs. I really enjoyed this book with all the twists it took and the very surprising ending.

Thank you NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for the ARC of this book that I absolutely could not put down.

I find Sally Hepworth to be a really reliable mystery writer, and she absolutely delivered with this one. The story is told through the perspectives of three foster sisters, featuring both past and present points-of-view. Hepworth successfully creates three unique voices through the sisters, allowing the reader to experience the same event through different eyes. This is a dark and often unsettling novel but one I would recommend to anyone looking for a fast-paced, female driven story! Thank you to Hepworth, NetGalley, and St. Martin’s Press for the ARC!

I really enjoyed the latest book by Sally Hepworth. It was well written and I read it quickly. It also had some twists at the end that I hadn’t quite put together and saw coming. I look forward to her next book!
Thank you NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for this ARC!

Twenty five years ag three girls met at a foster home. Today they each receive a phone call from the police that there former foster home has been demolished and the bones of a young child have been found. While recounting their stories to the police it is apparent that there was a lot of things going on with the foster mother and their time in the home that no one knows and that wasn't good for any of the girls. They found a way to escape the foster mother, but now are sucked back into her conniving, selfish, hateful orbit and they have no idea how bad she really is and how far she has gone.

I always love Sally Hepworth's books. Her writing style keeps me on the edge of my seat with plot and character development.

The novel follows Jessica, Norah, and Alicia over past and present timelines of their foster child experience. The problem I had was none of the characters seemed all that likable. However, I did not see the ending coming and had to reread it twice to fully grasp.

I will always put Sally's books at the top of my "to read" pile and would recommend this to everyone.

I really enjoyed Darling Girls. It kept me guessing until the end and there were twists that I didn’t see coming. I didn’t want to put it down. At some points, I found the twists and characters hard to follow but overall I really enjoyed the book and recommend it when it comes out on April 23, 2024

Jessica, Alicia, and Norah grew up in foster care with Miss Fairchild. Unbeknownst to the authorities, Mrs. Fairchild was far different behind closed doors than she presented herself on wellness check visits. Miss Fairchild was obsessed with cleaning, held the girls to unrealistic expectations, and was the farthest thing from a warm mother figure. But was she a murderer? When the three women receive a call from police saying that human bones have been found under Miss Fairchild’s swimming pool, the sisters are pulled back into Miss Fairchild’s devious web.

Wow, what a thrilling story! I literally couldn’t put it down. Sally Hepworth is an auto-buy author for me at this point. I tell myself that I’ll only read a few pages and then find myself completely sucked in! I felt connected with all the sisters in different ways. All of them were so desperate to protect each other and were forced to go through terrible things. One of the most intriguing parts was trying to figure out whether Miss Fairchild was a murderer or not and who the bones belonged to. I won’t say more except that there were some excellent red herrings and twists that made me gasp. I love Sally Hepworth’s thrillers and look forward to her next book!

Thank you to Sally Hepworth, St. Martin’s Press, and Netgalley for a free ARC in exchange for an honest review.

For publisher: My review will be posted on Goodreads, Instagram, Storygraph, Amazon, Barnes & Noble etc.

Oh Sally Hepworth!! I just love her books and this one was no different!!! I loved this dark twisty slow burn of a thriller, we have 3 foster sisters and about their lives now and back when they where kids at Mrs Fairchilds country home as foster children and what they endured there and how it impacted their adult lives! This one is kinda heavy so know that going on, the abuse these children faced wasn’t easy to read about. But saying that I think it was also written really well with enough detail to keep me wanting more but not completely destroying my heart. I thought how it switched to each POV and to now and then was very smooth and it flowed well! I loved each POV equally and couldn’t wait to get back to each to know what happened

Darling Girls by Sally Hepworth is a phenomenal thriller that takes the reader through a gamut of emotions with its twists and revelations. Hepworth makes use of four different points of view and switches back and forth between the past and present to reveal the story with skill and compassion.
Sometimes as a reader you have to accept that the author has done her research because you are unfamiliar with the subject matter. This time, for me, I was all too familiar with the subject matter and must say that Hepworth is bang on in her depiction of the darker side of the foster care system.
I found the underlying tale of the sisters in foster care disturbing because Hepworth was so accurate in her descriptions of the emotional impact of abusers in foster care and adoption, and of the horrible care givers who cause the pain. Even as an adult a world away from where this book is set, I recognize that feeling of being 'lucky' that Hepworth portrays so well. Lucky that my experience wasn't as bad as the ones described in the book, lucky to have been able to stay with my sister. I remember the hunger - for food, for affection, for approval, for safety...the list goes on. I relate to the bitterness on hearing the women who mistreated us praised as though they were saints for taking us in, when they really took foster children for the money or adopted for appearances sake, not the children's.
The story in Darling Girls hits home with realistic characters who grow up to be flawed adults. It is compelling, and as their story unfolds with multiple surprises and twists, it grabs the reader and won't let go. It will resonate with this former foster care survivor for a long time to come and is sure to move others as well.
Well-written, suspenseful, with plenty of gut wrenching twists and heartwarming relationships that provide the characters with strength and support, this book goes beyond thriller to examining a social issue often overlooked, with care and skill.
This is the best Sally Hepworth I've read so far.
Thank you to #NetGalley for the ARC of #DarlingGirls.

Something I really appreciated about this book is how all of the characters actions felt very realistic to their development throughout the book. Everything tracked very well. The ending twist I did not see coming at all, and I appreciated leaving the book a little messy in the end.

Not the next Gone Girl but there is enough here to entertain

One of my favorite mystery tropes pervades this novel—a before and after timeline with additional pieces of the puzzle being slowly revealed.

Darling Girls is set in Australia focusing on three foster children, Jessica, Norah, and Alicia who all lived at Wild Meadows with their maniacal foster mum, Holly Fairchild.

The overall reading experience was enjoyable, particularly the plot. Take the very first page. Someone is talking to Dr. Warren, the psychiatrist. Who is it?

However, there is one thing holding back Darling Girls from being exceptional—its characters. These characters were not very convincing; they felt flat and predictable. It felt as though Hepworth created a character outline describing the three main characters in two sentences. Some form of the word “organized” was used 23 times!

This weak character development ended up seeping into and tainting the narrative voice and the ending.

The narrative voice was rather dull. For a great modern example of a spectacular narrative voice, explore The Fury by Alex Michaelides. Darling Girls is written in the third person; however, Hepworth should have considered the first-person perspective to increase the suspense, really leaning into the narrator’s desperation and terror, quickening the reader’s pulse. Darling Girls also lacked the humor of Hepworth’s The Good Sister.

Because the characters were cliché, the ending was lackluster and overly cozy—downright forgettable.

Not a seminal piece of the mystery genre but Darling Girls solidly holds its own.

I’m going to be the unpopular opinion on this one in that I liked it okay, but didn’t love it. There wasn’t anything wrong with it, I simply found myself getting a little board while reading because it’s quite the slow burn with no real shocking reveals throughout to keep me hooked. But I love Sally Hepworth and there’s no denying that she knows how to write a domestic thriller. There’s a lot of trauma and abuse in this one, and with a small cast of characters it’s pretty easy to tell who is going to be at fault. ⁠
The dual POV is very well written and takes us to a shocking ending that while fun, was a little too late in the “thriller” department for me.

Darling Girls
Sally Hepworth
Pub Date: April 23, 2024

I really enjoyed this book. It follows the story of three foster girls and their experiences living with Ms. Fairchild.

When I say this story gets pretty wild I mean it. I love Sally Hepworths’s writing and this one didn’t disappoint. She has a way of keeping the shock factor up.

This story was told in multiple POVS which I really liked. It helped bring each character to life showing their history and how they ended up in Ms. Fairchilds care. There were so many aspects of the children’s stories that were raw and really pulled at my heart strings. However, it really made the story that much better by using that to draw in the reader.

Thank you @stmartinspress and @netgalley for a copy of this book.

I read the Soulmate by Sally Hepworth and I didn't think this book could top it but it did. This book was told from different perspectives and also jumped to a different timeline at times. It was a page turner and just when you think the story is done there is a shocking surprise reveal!

I was so excited to get this ARC on netgalley, as I've really enjoyed other Sally Hepworth books.

This psychological mystery follows 3 sisters who met in foster care, 25 years after leaving the home that made them sisters, bones are found buried under the house. As the investigation goes on, you get all three of their point of views, as well as a mystery person. I thought this would confuse me at points, especially because you also get past and present, but their stories and personalities are each so unique. You really get to know each character, what put them in foster care, their experience with Miss Fairchild, and who they are in present day. I would recommend checking trigger warnings.

4.5⭐ for me! I mean, that ending!