Sally Hepworth does it again.
Thanks to NetGalley and St Martin's Press for the ARC to read and review!
This book overcame a trigger of mine - abusive treatment of children. In spite of that I loved the book and am so glad I read it.
Jessica, Norah and Alicia were all in a foster care home with Miss Fairchild. It was not a good situation and each young woman clearly has scars from their upbringing. They are all contacted by a police officer who tells them bones have been found at the house and they are all called back for questioning and investigation.
What follows is a roller coaster ride or twists and turns! Domestic suspense at its best.
The book goes back and forth with the different points of view and at times it is not totally clear who is narrating a section. I could hardly put this one down.
I did find the ending satisfying and the final twist was like WOW!

Once I got into this one, I couldn't put it down, but if I'm being completely honest, the horror of the foster care system is never going to be my first choice for a "quick read" mystery novel (maybe I'm still recovering from reading "White Oleander" many, many years ago). I did find this one very interesting and I absolutely loved the characters--if you are looking for a character-driven mystery, Sally Hepworth is always the way to go.

Thank you Netgalley and the publisher for this ARC!

This book had me hooked from the first page, and I devoured it! It was a haunting story that will stay with me for a while. The character development and depth was beautiful. Chef's kiss!

Alice, Jessica, Norah each have their own issues, but they have a sister like bond that can’t be broken. They grew up together with a foster mother they had to be very careful around. Now that bones are discovered under their old foster home, they need to bring up those memories.

Another great Sally Hepworth story for me! I could not put this one down and was enamored by the story of the girls in the past. The foster mother’s cruelty kept the suspense at a very tense level. There was also a mystery in the present day timeline and random therapy sessions thrown in. At the end, it all comes together in shocking ways that I never would have predicted; and that’s still not the end!

“The thing about sharing a story like mine is that it doesn’t stop when you’re not telling it. It continues to play out in my mind continuously.”

Darling Girls comes out 4/23.

This is book 2 of Sally's that I have read and I am for sure a fan! The fast pace and twists kept me turning pages as fast as possible. This will be one I recommend for all thriller readers.

This is my FAVORITE Sally Hepworth novel to date!
A story about three sisters, not connected by blood but unfortunate circumstances. They think they have finally left their foster home for good until many years they get a fall from the police about an ongoing investigation at the old foster house. Not only is it being torn, but they found human bones buried underneath the house.
How much do the sisters know? And how much have they been keeping from eachother?
5 stars for this twisty read 🤗🙌

The three main characters make this psychological mystery by author Sally Hepworth.

„Darling Girls“ - kudos for the eerily creepy title - opens with an unidentified woman seeing a psychiatrist, and we‘ll continue to sporadically go back to her storyline throughout the book as she attends more sessions and delves deeper into her past. Simultaneously, the main story follows three foster sisters, Jessica, Norah, and Alicia - not related by blood, but in any other way that counts - who found themselves, one by one, in the care of Miss Fairchild on the Wild Meadows estate. The storyline alternates between their horrid past experiences at the hands of Miss Fairchild when they lived with her as young girls and the present. Now grown women and tighter than ever before, the sisters reluctantly return to Wild Meadows when bones are found during the demolition of the home and the police request their presence.

This plot device is my main issue with this book - the fact that the sisters would be contacted by the police, much less summoned to Port Agatha, where their childhood home once stood, before the bones are even identified, makes absolutely zero sense. The only thing making less sense, in fact, is the simultaneous arrival of other women, some of whom only spent a few days in Miss Fairchild‘s care. But then again, the police‘s entire behavior is irritating and procedurally worrisome, so you‘ll just have to overlook that.

As for the mystery of who the bones belong to, at first seemed it pretty straightforward (and not particularly original), but the author definitely managed to surprise me with the final revelation.

While all this does not a superb thriller make (I‘d characterize it more as a psychological novel of suspense, but to be honest did not find it very suspenseful), the three sisters are what makes this book shine and stand out. I fell in love with all three of them and was rooting for them. Probs to the author for providing closure to each of their individual storylines in the end. The other thing that made this book stand out to me is the ending. It was unexpected, and though hard to read, made a lot of sense and added new depth to the entire story.

Because of the heavy subject matter, I wouldn‘t exactly call this an enjoyable read, but for the reasons mentioned above it was certainly one of the best suspense novels I have read recently.

TW for child abuse, drug abuse.

PS. I read the uncorrected copy, and boy, does it need corrections. Some things I noted while reading:
- typos galore!
- some consistency errors (i.e. the patient mentions the boyfriend she has at 15, but when we catch up with her next, she is back to being 14, the boyfriend obviously already a thing of the past, though her revelations are supposed to be chronological),
- some weird changes in subject (the sisters receive a phone call about [spoiler]‘s criminal history, yet the next sentence reads as if the conversation never even happened).
That being said, since these things might well be corrected by the time the book is published, they did not affect my rating.

Thank you to St. Martin‘s Press for the gifted ARC provided through NetGalley.

SH is amazing at domestic thrillers. This one was pretty face paced so didn’t take long to finish. I wanted to know what happened at Wild Meadows and with Ms. Fairchild.

This story is about 3 sisters growing up in foster care at Wild Meadows. The sisters receive a call that bones have been found under the house they stayed at and the police need help identifying the remains. Whose bones could they be? And what exactly happeend all those years at Wild Meadows?

I liked the multiple POVs and the dual timelines of past and present. You got pieces of info and some may or may not be true.

The ending was a total surprise!

I would definitely recommend this read! Pick up in the U.S. on 4/23/24!

Thank you NetGalley, St. Martin’s Press and the author for this ARC!

I would really give this book 3.5 stars. It started off promising. Towards the middle of the book I got a little bored. The ending definitely made up for the middle.

Jessica, Alicia, and Norah grew up in a foster home together in a small town in Australia. Their foster mother was an unflinchingly brutal narcissist and their childhoods were spent drowning in desperation. They were treated like slaves, deprived not just of love but of even the most basic needs like food and safety. But through it all, and through the rest of their lives trying to overcome the trauma they experienced, they had each other.

Twenty-five years later they receive phone calls from detectives in the small town where they grew up. A body had been found. They think they knew to whom the bones belonged, but it turns out they know nothing.

The first half or 2/3 of this book is a real grabber. I got completely sucked into the story. Then things kind of came to a head and the story leveled out. I definitely wouldn't say I got bored, but I became complacent, thinking this was a surprisingly happy ending for a book of this sort.

And then...

My jaw was literally hanging open for the last few minutes I read this book. I should have seen it coming. But how could I?

I haven't read anything else by this author but I certain will after this! I highly recommend this book.

Thank you to the author, the publisher, and NetGalley for providing me with an ARC.

Loved this book!! I want to read again for the first time. The characters were deeply human and it explores how trauma impacts our sense of selves for all . . .even the villian of the story. I was not expecting to emphatize with the villian so much in this story. Will recommend to many.

Synopsis:
Three girls grow up in a dysfunctional foster home and are bonded as “sisters for life.” Twenty five years later they get a call from a detective that bones are found on the property, bringing them back to their old hometown and forcing them to relive their abusive past.
Pros: This was an interesting read! Each sister narrated different chapters so it kept the pace moving and added depth to the story. I really found myself turning the pages and anticipating the ending!
Cons: When the ending did arrive I felt a bit let down-until the last chapter. It had a great twist and sealed the story nicely!

I am thankful to receive this arc from Netgalley/St. Martin’s Press; however it had SO many typos it seemed like it was drafted on an iPhone! It was SO distracting so I hope that is changed before it is released. There was also “psychiatrist interviews” in the book and I’m not sure if it was meant to be misleading who the client was, or if it was confusing due to the formatting.

Sorry you have to wait until April for this to be released, but it’s worth adding to your TBR!

Another wild winner by Sally Hepworth! One of my favorite thriller writers, who never disappoints.
Darling Girls was well-crafted and such a fun thriller to unravel.
The book centers on three women, Jessica, Norah, and Alicia. They bonded and raised together when they were foster children at a cruel woman's Miss Fairchild's farmhouse.
Decades after escaping her abuse and the women are now grown, bones are discovered buried under the house.
The women are then thrown back into the drama and mystery of the horrible place and past.
The parts with the abuse was hard and frustrating to read. So very important to know for trigger warnings. It's terrifying to know how there are real foster homes with dire and abusive situations.
The main three characters are sympathetic. The book is a quick read and is shocking by the end.
I highly recommend this wild book! Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for the chance to read it!

this was a well written thriller. it was my first book by the author. ill be reading this author again.

WOW....is that enough of a review? Talk about a page-turner! Three foster siblings are contacted years after they left their abusive foster mother because bones have been found at the home where they lived. Through past events and current scenes, we see how they were scarred for life but maintained a loving environment for each other.

The galley I read had a TON of typos, lol, which normally would bother me but I know they will get cleaned up before publication. That being said, even with all of the errors, it STILL drew me in night after night.

p.s....don't walk away from the book too soon or you'll miss the twist at the very end.

Thanks to Netgalley for the arc to review.

Three women, who grew up in foster care together, are forced to face their turbulent childhood when their childhood home reveals a mystery neither knew about. With each page, there's a new twist, just when you think you have figured out exactly what the mystery is. The ending is truly a surprise!! I really loved this book and wish I could have given it more than 5 stars!! I highly recommend this one!!!

Darling Girls was a super well written book! It was an easy read and hard to put down. I often read Sally Hepworth's books and found this to be a great story. just not my favorite of hers.

3.5 ⭐️
Thank you NetGalley and St Martin's Press for the advance reader edition of the book in exchange for my honest opinion.

This was a book that started off a little slow to me, but picked up as the pages were turned. There are alot of questions surrounding a body found in a basement where 3 foster girls lived for a time. It’s a multiple POV story with alternating timelines, so that can be confusing if you have trouble with multistory POV’s. A couple of twists did occur and the ending was fantastic.

I loved this book. I mostly read romance but this was a very effective pallet cleanser. I loved how the story was written from different POVs as well and present and past, the mystery of who was in the therapists office was a great twist. Darling Girls follows 3 girls who grew up in foster care and who are now recounting their experience as the house they grew up in has become the subject of a police investigation. Each of the girls came to live with their foster mother Miss Fairchild for different reasons but what they all have in common is realizing the sweet, innocent and loving woman Miss Fairchild presents herself as is anything but the truth.

I found it really intriguing to see how the girls dealt with the challenges of growing up in this house, how it affected them then and how it is still having an impact on them in adulthood. I was absolutely captivated and had a hard time putting this book down. I will be sure to pick up more books by this author in the future.

Thank you, NetGalley, for an advanced copy of Darling Girls in exchange for a review.

This has got to be my favorite Sally Hepworth to date. I couldn’t put it down! I finished it on a 4 hour plane ride. It’s got everything you could want…great characters, unique storyline, mystery/intrigue. The ending felt a bit rushed, but again, the book overall was fantastic. I can’t wait for it to hit shelves because people are going to be obsessed!