⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️
Thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for the ARC! I am really enjoying Sally Hepworth's books these days. This book will not disappoint! Definitely a thrill ride! Great character development and enjoyed reading about all the characters and their beginnings. This book will definitely keep some guessing and not see the end coming. . Highly recommend!

It has been a long while since I've read and rated anything 5 stars. Yet, Darling Girls by Sally Hepworth is worthy of this rating and has everything I'm looking for in a novel.

1. Character development was seriously good and had me invested in each of our main ladies. I felt like I knew Alicia, Norah (with an h) and Jessica so well by the time I was 30% in.
2. Multiple POV's gave me great insight into each personality.
3. Chapter endings that led us right back into the time period in question with the next chapter. I really enjoyed this back-and-forth experience.
4. Supporting characters that added to the story.
5. I could visualize each scene playing out as I read.

This is a book I am happy to recommend to anyone looking for an easy-to-read thriller that moves along at a good pace.

Many thanks to Netgally and St. Martin's Press for this ARC. All opinions expressed are authentically my own.

𝖣𝖺𝗋𝗅𝗂𝗇𝗀 𝖦𝗂𝗋𝗅𝗌
𝖦𝖾𝗇𝗋𝖾: 𝖽𝗈𝗆𝖾𝗌𝗍𝗂𝖼 𝗍𝗁𝗋𝗂𝗅𝗅𝖾𝗋
𝖯𝗎𝖻 𝖽𝖺𝗍𝖾: 𝖠𝗉𝗋𝗂𝗅 𝟤𝟥, 𝟤𝟢𝟤𝟦

📣Holy Moly!!!! Y’all need to 🚨save the date🚨 for April of next year because that’s when this book comes out!! Wow….just wow! 🙌👌

🤏𝖳𝖾𝖾𝗇𝗒 𝖳𝗂𝖽𝖻𝗂𝗍
Three girls all grew up together under the same foster mother who was a completely horrible person!! Many years later human remains were found under the house they grew up in & an investigation is started to find out who it belongs to & what exactly happened.

💭𝖬𝗒 𝗍𝗁𝗈𝗎𝗀𝗁𝗍𝗌... this one was jaw dropping-ly good! I mean wow wow & wow!! I loved it. I devoured it. It was the perfect amount of slow burning amazing-ness with twists that weren’t too out there & that ending! 🤌Whatttt??? 😱 This one really has it all…great story line with characters you get to know so well as a great fiction novel would, but then it has that creepy thriller vibe with the perfect amount of suspense thrown in as well. Wow! 🤌
YALLLLLL!! Save the date. Do it! Go in as blind as you can hence why I always do a teeny tidbit on these thrillers. This is one I will be thinking about for a while. I will remind you again in April on this one!! 😘

@sallyhepworth thank you so much for the fun! Bravo!👏🥳

5 solid stars ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️!!!!!!

Thanks @stmartinspress and @netgalley for my advanced copy 😊

I was instantly engrossed in this book! I loved the characters and had an instant investment. The story kept me guessing and the last chapter was amazing. I could not have guessed it.

What a riveting book from *thee* Sally Hepworth! What an honor to receive this ARC. I am a huge Sally Hepworth fan (“The Good Sister” anyone?!) and she can do no wrong in my eyes. I’m an honest reviewer though so you can count on to shoot straight about a book!

I LOVED this book. It was riveting, emotional and suspenseful all rolled into one. Sally is one of the rare authors that is able to roll beautiful (truly amazing) both character development and plot development into a book. She is a queen of domestic suspense while also evoking many emotions from her readers.

The plot of this book centers around two girls and the foster mother who wronged them. I found the premise to be unexpected and wasn’t sure what to anticipate but Sally proved that she can take any subject matter and write a beautiful story. This wasn’t just about revenge. It was about healing and coming to terms with the past. Absolutely amazing!

Thank you to netgalley and St. Martin’s Press for this ARC!

First off, a big thank you goes to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for the opportunity to read this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Sally Hepworth is a brilliant writer and I always look forward to reading her latest work. Darling Girls immediately moved to the top of my TBR pile once I was approved, and I read it in one night. I found myself laughing out loud during several different points, but I was also overcome with emotion throughout different parts of the book. I truly loved how fleshed out each character was and how the consequences of the trauma each sister endured was portrayed. Little things like obsessing over cleanliness and being uptight over routines and schedules was highlighted subtly, and more noticeable issues like anger and violent outbursts were thrown in throughout very delicately. It all made everything feel real and helped the reader connect to the characters and what they went through. Speaking as someone with PTSD, I think it was really well done.

This was easily 5/5 stars, in my opinion. Now sadly, I have to wait another year for Sally Hepworth’s next book.

I loved this book! Sally Hepworth has yet to let me down. It was a quick, fast paced read with just the right amount of twists and turns. Some of the material was difficult to read due to the subject matter of abuse in foster homes, so I would definitely list various forms of abuse as a trigger warning.That being said, I feel like Hepworth shed light on the important issue without overdoing it on the details. The characters were layered and diverse, each with unique but relatable struggles and it was so interesting to unravel their shared history which kept you guessing the whole way! Thank you so much to the publisher and NetGalley for giving me this ARC in exchange for my honest opinion. i can't wait for everyone else to read it!

Riveting. Classic Hepworth.
Alicia, Jessica and Norah are sisters - by choice, not blood.
The women bonded during their days in foster care amid abuse and
neglect and grew up emotionally invested in and attached to each other.
The cord holding them together could be severed when bones are found
on the grounds of the mansion they lived in as very young girls & are also
discovered to be from the time they lived there.
So what do they know??
As the investigation into the bones draws them into the past, the story becomes chilling
as their former foster guardian, Miss Fairchild shows up on the scene to follow developments.
Who is the person buried and what happened to her?? Who buried the bones?
Classic question that keeps you flipping the pages to find the answer after a lot of wrong turns.
Very good whodoneit.

Three sisters bonded in foster care return to their childhood foster home after human remains are found beneath the house.
The story switches back and forth from the present tense with the sisters as adults to the their past stories growing up. I love books that have multiple points of view and make you feel like you are in the process of solving a mystery, I enjoyed the twists and turns in this book and the unexpected ending. I did have trouble relating to the characters and felt the book was very heavy (trigger warning:child abuse).
3.5 ⭐️

Jessica, Norah, and Alicia have a bond that matches that of any close sisters; however, they are not actually related. This bond was formed during their childhood at as foster children at Wild Meadows Farm under the care of Miss Fairchild. Miss Fairchild was an unpredictable, cruel, and traumatizing caregiver that left the three girls with scars to last a lifetime. Fortunately, in an act of desperation, Jessica, Norah, and Alicia get away from Wild Meadows Farm thinking better days are ahead. Unfortunately, when a call from the police comes saying that the farm has been sold and demolished leading to the discovery of bones under the house, the girls are literally thrown back into their childhood. Asked to travel back to where it all happened to answer the police’s questions unearths all kinds of old memories, but also raises the questions of who the bones belong to and who put them there?

Hepworth’s “Darling Girls” is an emotional rollercoaster. Reader beware that you’ll start this book, not be able to put to down and feel some kind of way the whole time. As Jessica, Norah, and Alicia recall their time at Wild Meadows Farm you feel as though you are there along with the girls, feeling all the same emotions as them. The novel is fast paced, with twist and turns along the way - Hepworth even saving the biggest twist for the very last chapter. Clear your evening and pick up this novel, 4/5

Domestic suspense page-turner. Loved it. Three girls find themselves in a foster care home with an unpredictable caregiver battling her own childhood demons. Before long the three girls have bonded as "sisters" to protect themselves and each other. When infants begin arriving on the scene they are cared for by the sisters, but not all of them are willing to share the caregiver's attention and love with these new faces. Intense at some points.

My thanks to both NetGalley and the publisher St. Martin's Press for an advance copy of this novel about being a child and treated by everyone around you as a pest, a nuisance, something to be made money off, with no value or love given.

William Faulkner said "The past is never dead. It's not even past." This is true for a lot of things. People talk today about the good ole days when people didn't let things bother them, they had more grit, gumption in intestinal fortitude back then. They didn't and the current state of politics and the world shows this. Our past feeds us, keeps us scared, keeps us lonely and distant from those around us, makes relationships difficult as trust is usually the first victim to our past. Humans lie to themselves, say it was long ago and far away, and over. However it never is. Like bones finally coming to the surface, the past has a way of catching up to a person, and destroying what one has made. Darling Girls, by Sally Hepworth, is a thriller about the past set today, when the secrets, lies and even bodies are proving what was once forgotten actually is true, and how the past is never really the past.

Alicia, Norah and Jessica are three girls brought together by shared circumstance, and problems sent to be fostered out in the countryside on a very large farm. Miss. Fairchild is their foster mother, a woman who lives by a particular set of rules, and demands complete obedience to these rules. Rules are not made to be broken, and the girls will pay for each transgression. The girls are not related, but each have their own problems which in a way unite them. Alicia has OCD with a compulsive need to organize things, even if it goes against the order of the farm. Norah has issues with anger, bursting out into volcanic rages with violence and ending just as quick. And Jessica with such feelings of self-doubt and fear of being alone, which makes Jessica act in strange ways. The girls flee one night, never seeing Miss Fairchild again, though haunted by their time there. However the women they have become are dragged back, as a body has been found on the property, and questions are being raised about what happened on the farm. Something the women have never shared.

A very good story that skips a lot of the tropes of this kind of woman in jeopardy story/ unreliable narrator novel. Hepworth is a very good writer, and has excellent plotting skills, not needing tricks to keep readers engaged. The women all are distinct characters with clear voices and readers won't be wonder who is who or why. In addition the characters are all interesting including some of the supporting ones, who really fill the story out well. This is kind of a rough tale as stories about foster homes tend to be, so a little warning to readers is given here. However this is a well-written very engaging story, and one that is highly entertaining and very smart. Another very good story from Sally Hepworth.

WOW this was a great ride!!!!!!!!

I loved all three woman and their quirks! From Jessica's OCD, type A nature with the loving permissive husband to Norah with the anger issues, to Alicia that has so much love in her heart. As someone who has worked with a lot of foster youth, I really enjoyed reading about group homes and foster youth as I feel it helps humanize the very broken system.

This is a tale of sisterhood, I really enjoyed seeing how all of them were there for each other in the ways that they knew how. Miss Fairchild is terrifying and I can't believe all the gaslighting she put the girls through. I really enjoyed how it went back and forth from the children's youth to 25 years later when they were grown.

I think this was such an interesting look into the impacts of childhood trauma. I love it and I would highly highly recommend.

Darling Girls was thoroughly engaging from start to finish with great pacing. I felt attached to all three protagonists from early on, and the transitions between past and present worked perfectly to highlight the lasting trauma the main characters carry with them: The novel’s antagonist was compelling as her intentions were never fully clear always leaving me guessing what her next move would be, the little glimpses into her own past throughout the novel were a nice addition as well. Highly recommend this book to everyone once it releases! I might just give it a re-read upon its publishing myself. Thank you to NetGalley, the publishers of Darling Girls, and Sally Hepworth for allowing me to read the novel in advance and share my thoughts!

4.25 stars

I really enjoyed Sally Hepworth's latest DARLING GIRLS. This one I liked as much Hepworth's THE MOTHER-IN-LAW, and I felt that her few books in between fell a little flat for me.

In this one, we have a trio of foster sisters: Jessica (OCD and has her own organizing company), Norah (angry and impulsive), and Alicia (low self-esteem). They are called back to town when a dead body is found under their foster mother Miss Fairchild's house. Each of the women is distinct, and - while simplified for the novel - it was easy to tell them apart because each had her own voice.

During the novel the reader is recounted with descriptions of living in the home with Miss Fairchild when they were foster children. It is intriguing, and interspersed the reader gets scenes of one of the women with their new therapist.

What I really liked about this novel is there weren't out-of-left-field twists, and there was pretty good characterization that dealt with childhood trauma and how it needs to be dealt with before it perpetuates.

Thank you to Netgalley and St. Martin's Press for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Wow! Sally Hepworth is the Queen of thrillers! Just when you think you’ve figured out how it’ll end, she throws in another twist. I loved the plot with the bond of the sisters & the mystery woven in. Thanks for allowing me to read an early copy of this! I loved every page!

This book was heart wrenching, looking into the individual lives of foster children and the sometimes horrible lives that children can sometimes be put into. This book was interesting and held my attention for all the right reasons! What a plot twist at the end that I would have never imagined! I was smitten with the plot and the character build! What a great book! What a page turner! Thank you at NetGalley for providing me this book for an honest review!

Darling Girls by Sally Hepworth

Australian author Sally Hepworth is a master at producing twisty family-drama novels set in her homeland. Her latest incorporates two timelines.

When construction crews discover bones buried beneath Wild Meadows Farm, police question three young women. Alicia, Jessica, and Nora once lived at Wild Meadows with Miss Fairchild, a manipulative, demanding foster care mom. Miss Fairchild ran Wild Meadows with an iron fist and doled out heartbreaking punishments. Despite not being related, the three girls bonded and remained best friends as adults.

They realized they needn’t be related to be sisters.

As a reader, I worried this novel—given the subject matter—would turn dark and unsettling. I should have trusted Hepworth. She handled the foster care topic deftly, and I thoroughly enjoyed the book.

Like Hepworth's other novels, this was masterful storytelling. I never doubted Amy was real, and having grown up in a household where fear was common, I could relate to the sisters. I'm glad justice was done in the end, and it didn't surprise me that Fairchild was an unreliable narrator.

I like the way Sally writes and structures her books. This story was a bit much as I once fostered and I have adopted. Those topics run throughout the book and at times was difficult to read about abuse. Four stars. Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC.