4 stars

Another fantastic domestic suspense from Sally Hepworth! The reader slowly discovers the story of three foster sisters through chapters alternating between the past and present, and through each girls' POV. Hepworth once again expertly crafts complex and engaging characters. The descriptions of the girls' traumatic and abusive childhoods and how it affected them as adults could be hard to read about at times, so fair warning. Overall the story was gripping and shocking, with an ending that leaves you with a pit in your stomach. Highly recommend to any psychological/domestic suspense reader.

As someone who started her reading journey years ago by only reading thrillers, finding a thriller that I can’t guess the plot twist on is not easy for me to do. This book did just that. It left me guessing up until the very last chapter on what was happening. I felt connected to the characters and found myself rooting for them and tearing up with them throughout the entire book. One of the best thriller novels I’ve read in a while and I’m so thankful to NetGalley for allowing me the opportunity to read this before publication.

First I would like to thank Netgalley and St Martin's press for the ARC of this novel . Sally Hepworth just does not miss. I have been dying for this book to be published so I can buy a copy for my sister - another avid reader/fan. The mix of family dynamics with a solid mystery is just spot on every time. I devoured it in two sittings !

They left years ago and never looked back…until one phone call about their old foster home changes everything.

Jessica is a young orphan who, years ago, was sent to live with her new foster mother, Miss Fairchild. Jessica was promised a new life where she could create memories with Miss Fairchild as her mother. Will life remain the same as she transitions from the mother-daughter bond to the newly found bond of sisterhood?

Jessica, Norah and Alicia narrate a fictional story about the dark side of the foster care system in this emotional and captivating story that is well-portrayed and is a strong voice for many children in the “system.” Sally Hepworth strongly relays the voices of inspiration behind this page-turning thriller, which may be enjoyed by fans of John Marrs and Lucinda Berry.

Thanks for the opportunity to receive an ARC of “Darling Girls.” It will be a book that I add to my recommendation list, heeding trigger warnings as needed for some readers due to the nature of the book. I anticipate reading more of Sally’s books!

Darling Girls
By Sally Hepworth
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Wow. Just wow. “Darling Girls” was a book I could not stop reading. I became so attached to Jessica, Norah, and Alicia and their story. This book certainly hit me in the feels.

Darling Girls is told from the voices of three foster sisters - Jessica, Norah and Alicia, along with the Dr. Warren, the psychiatrist. The sisters are now grown and telling this story from present day and from the past when they were girls growing up with Miss Fairchild on her beautiful farm, Wild Meadows. All three girls grew close living with Miss Fairchild, as they needed each other living with someone like her.

As adults they find out a dead child is buried under the home they grew up in, and they think they know who the child was and fear being accused of this child's death. They lived in fear throughout their childhood and even as adults.

Hepworth tells a twisty tale that kept me reading and listening to the very end and appreciate the background in her Author's note in her Acknowledgements Page. However, there are some cringey moments and plenty of triggers of the horrors that children go through in this story. Like the author, I hope every child is loved and cared for by their family, foster family or adopted family, but also know that there are plenty who aren't cared for as they should be.

The author, Sally Hepworth, will be at Fabled Bookshop in Waco on May 1 and I look forward to meeting her after having read a number of her books!

My thanks to Net Galley, St. Martin's Press, and Macmillian Audio for advanced copies of the e-book and audiobook.

Oh, Sally Hepworth, your wickedly twisted mind never disappoints! Darling Girls lures in you from the opening sentence and puts you into a stranglehold until the very last secret is revealed. Like all of Hepworth's books, you think you know what's happening only to find yourself picking your jaw up off the floor. In my opinion, this book is right up there with The Good Sister which is a benchmark for me in the psychological thriller genre.

Jessica, Norah, and Alicia grew up in the foster system; all residing at Wild Meadows in the care of Miss Fairchild. Their time at the farm house is not idyllic and the girls bonded as foster sisters to escape the new traumas inflicted on them. Now adults, the sisters are forced to confront their past when bones are discovered buried on the grounds of their former home. Each of the sisters is grappling with the effects of their individual and shared traumas. When the police call them in to answer questions, it is uncertain whether they are seen as witnesses or suspects.

This book is packed with secrets. lies, suspense, and a mystery to be solved. Overlying it all is love and devotion among the sisters. They are each other's fiercest protectors and will sacrifice anything to protect each other. Hepworth delivers a home run with Darling Girls. The narrative navigates between past and present telling a captivating and cruel story. The unwinding gives the reader insight into the characters while bringing the reader to the stunning conclusion. Sally Hepworth weaves a tale with precision and empathy. Her characters are fully realized and deeply flawed - and you won't soon forget them.

Darling Girls will be released on April 23, 2024. Mark your calendars. It's a must read. If you are not already a Sally Hepworth fan, you soon will be!

Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for the opportunity to read this ARC in exchange for my unbiased review.

Sally Hepworth does it again! DARLING GIRLS is one of those books where “just one more chapter” turns into staying up all night to finish. I really appreciated that there weren’t any red herrings and the twists left me a little shook! It’s hard to say if this was predictable because it’s all about paying attention to details. I would figure things out, but then kinda get swept up in the narrative and kind of forget about certain things so when the twists came back around I was shook!

I loved the relationship between Jessica, Norah, and Alicia and how their relationship changed over the years, but they still had each other.

I have mixed feelings about the ending, but overall this was another win from Sally Hepworth! I can’t wait to dive into her backlist.

tw // child abuse, emotional abuse, addiction, assault

This had me for the first chunk but kinda lost me towards the second. Interesting hook but I found it a little cheesy and repetitive at times. Still a solid mystery though and I was intrigued to discover what ultimately happened in the end.

Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for the ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I'm sorry, but this wasn't good.

I requested this because I enjoyed The Soulmate last year quite a bit. I don't know what changed so much from then to now but this was not it.

The characters were not well developed and something about them felt incredibly stereotypical. I was thinking based on the blurb that a majority of this book was going to take place in the present day regarding the whole "mystery", but a huge chunk of it took place in their childhood with their foster mom, and the amount of psychological abuse they endured. I understood pretty early on what was happening here and it just felt like they were beating a dead horse with it.

The different point of views didn't really add anything to the story and I wasn't sure why the author felt it was necessary to have different point of view chapters when it was told from the third person.

This book is guilty of one of my biggest pet peeves, and that is when events that happen throughout the story get over-explained and told to you rather than shown to you. There was a LOT of that happening here especially in the "Before" chapters.

The "twists" were foreseeable hundreds of pages away and I'm not typically great at guessing things. I felt like I knew what was going on way before the characters did and that was frustrating.

Everything felt so disjointed, including the sentence structure and repetition of words or phrases. I understand this is an ARC, but there needs to be some heavy editing done to this book before it hits shelves.

Overall I am completely bummed that I didn't enjoy this more.

Darling Girls is the story of 3 foster sisters and their traumatic past. I'm a big fan of Sally Hepworth and really enjoyed this latest book. This look into the foster system was heartbreaking and really pulled me into the story. Hepworth is an amazing storyteller and Darling Girls is no exception. Although the material is hard on the soul, it's worth the read. It moves quickly and a couple of final twists in the end were very satisfying! I'd recommend this book (and all of her others) to everyone! Thanks to Netgalley and the publishers for the ARC in exchange for my honest review.

Darling Girls by Sally Hepworth was an engrossing quick read.

Jessica, Norah, and Alicia are foster sisters raised by Miss Fairchild. Now the girls are adults and after Miss Fairchild sells her estate, bones are found under the house. Whose bones are they?

In alternating timelines, Darling Girls follows the foster sister’s childhood with Miss Fairchild and years later, the investigation into the bones found.

A departure from Sally Hepworth’s domestic thriller, Darling Girls is about the foster care system. While hard to read at times, Sally Hepworth’s engaging writing style kept me sucked in.

My favorite part of Darling Girls is the description of the bonds of the foster girls. While not biological sisters, they become everything to each other. Even as adults, they would do anything for each other.

Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for an advanced copy in exchange for my honest opinion.

Darling Girls is a heartbreaking story of a foster home and the girls who grew up there but it is told in a way that wasn't so hard to read. The resilience of these girls was inspiring. The character development helps to immerse you in the story and the plight of the characters. There were many twists and turns that keep you guessing until the end. This was my first Sally Hepworth and it won't be the last.

Thank you to Net Galley. St. Martin's Press and Sally Hepworth for the opportunity to preview this novel. The opinions expressed are my own.

Sally Hepworth is at her best in this tale of three young women who were fostered by a woman that had questionable mothering tactics. They find themselves, as adults caught up in an investigation of a child's body found under the home of the lady who fostered them. As the story goes it gets more complicated. More young women fostered there emerge, as well as several who were mere babies at the time. The three from whose eyes the story is told have many issues to deal with from the childhood trauma that put them in foster care and their foster mother afterward. I thoroughly enjoyed this tale of trauma and triumph. It is a mystery but also a tale of love, sisters of the heart, loyalty, and love. Thanks to #NetGalley and #DarlingGirls for the oppotunity to read and review this book.

Thank you to NetGalley and St.Martin’s Press for the eARC! I knew nothing about the book other than it’s genre and author and was drawn to it after loving Sally Hepworth’s previous novel. I found myself intrigued by the mystery throughout and endeared to the characters quickly. I loved that Jessica, Alicia, and Norah were all such different characters and their bond was very special. My favorite being Alicia, but all three characters had such satisfying endings. Definitely check trigger warnings as this has some rather traumatic scenes and depictions of abuse.

I found this to be so different from the previous book of Sally Hepworth’s I read, but nonetheless compelling, unsettling and intriguing!

This was a quick read that kept my attention. The elements of the story around the foster care system broke my heart, while also forming pride for the characters of Alicia, Jessica and Norah. The sisters end up returning to the home where they met; run by a vindictive and cruel woman. A body has been discovered buried under the home. The sister’s secrets come to light as they try to uncover who the body belongs to.

This is the 5th book I've read from this author. I always take her books when offered as they are usually good. This was no exception.

The story centers around a foster home on a farm called "Wild Meadows" run by a Miss Fairchild. Three girls wind up living there and form an unbreakable bond, even while having different backgrounds and personalities. As time goes on it becomes evident that this foster home isn't exactly the protective refuge it was meant to be. The three foster children are now grown adults, and they all get calls to come for interviews at the police department. Some bones were found buried on the property formerly known as "Wild Meadows".

There are dueling time period chapters as the fosters tell their story. There are also interwoven chapters from an unknown woman going for psychiatric visits, slowly revealing her tortuous story. The story percolates along without boring moments, pulling along the reader as the story evolves to its poignant conclusion. This was an easy and quick read, a story that pulled me in by the heartstrings. *Warning: There are elements of physical, sexual, and mental child abuse.

Thank you to the publisher St. Martin's Press for providing an advance readers copy via NetGalley.

Thank you to #StMartinsPress and #NetGalley for providing this for me to read.Don't count this book out. It may start off slow but it does pick up and you will want to keep reading.

Sally Hepworth does it again. What a twisted plot and cast of characters. It kept me thinking, do I have an unreliable narrator(s)? Can this really be happening? This thriller had me saying so many times, just one more chapter!

Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for an ARC copy of Darling Girls.

I wasn't convinced this would be one I loved based on the blurb, but it was such a pleasant surprise! The depth of character development in the story made this an absolute home-run!

Jessica: Her type-A personality and anxious tendencies were a little TOO familiar 😬 she is definitely my soul sister.

Norah: She was absolutely hilarious and I loved ridiculously inappropriate antics.

Alicia: I loved her as soon as she was introduced. Her kind and relatable personality made her easy to root for.

I've enjoyed several of Sally Hepworth's books and this was definitely my favorite!