The Birthday by Carol Wyer @carolewyer @bookouture #BookReview

Hope you’re having a wonderful Friday!

Today I have a fabulous book I get to share with you! Thanks to Kim for my invitation to the blog tour and to Carol Wyer for hooking me on another series!💛🎂

One hot summer’s afternoon, five-year-old Ava Sawyer went to a party. She never came home…

When five-year-old Ava Sawyer goes missing from a birthday party at a local garden centre, the police are bewildered by the lack of leads. That is until two years later, when Ava’s body is found and another little girl, Audrey Briggs, goes missing. Audrey also attended that party …

Leading the investigation is Detective Natalie Ward. A mother of two teenagers, this case chills her to the bone, and is a disturbing reminder of the last job she worked on. One that still keeps her awake at night…

Natalie soon discovers that Ava’s mother has some worrying gaps in her alibi and as she digs deeper, she’s sure Ava’s father is not telling the full story. And what did the owner of the garden centre Elsa see that day? Something that she’s not telling Natalie …

Just as Natalie is facing up to the grim possibility that Ava and Audrey were killed by someone close to home, another little girl from the party doesn’t come home from her ballet lesson. Can Natalie find a way to stop this killer before more innocent lives are taken?

Gripping, fast-paced and nail-bitingly tense, this book will keep you flying through the pages long into the night. Perfect for fans of Angela Marsons…

My Thoughts

A birthday party, a yellow dress, a missing child….

Carol Wyer sure can suck you into an investigation…. I truly am the ultimate armchair detective (even though I generally read on my couch or in my bed)… some authors do a better job than others in drawing you into the story, making you feel part of it, and I think miss Wyer does an exceptional job of this… there is just something about her characters that breaks down the Barrier between the reader and the book….

When you drop your child off at a birthday party, you never think you will return and find her to have gone missing… five-year-old Ava went missing from her friend Harriet birthday party at a garden center… two years later her body is found, another girl goes missing, and is found in a replica yellow dress…. is someone killing off the children that attended that fateful birthday party? And if so why? Or is the connection a local dance studio?

This is the first book in the DI Natalie Ward series…. The investigation into these missing children has Natalie navigating her way through both parent and playground politics…. and when a third girl goes missing there is a time crunch to Saul the case before another child is killed… with a town full of suspects this was not an easy task… Natalie and I must have changed our minds at least 10 times, and the ultimate culprit…. did not see that coming!

This book was perfectly paste and kept me engaged throughout… The character development was stellar and left me wanting to know these characters better…. Natalie is a wife and mother to two teenaged boys, and is having a bit of a hard time juggling family life and her career… it will be really interesting to see how this develops throughout the series, can Natalie have it all? Does something need to give? And if so what?

Recommend to those of you who enjoy a good police procedural with some fabulous characters and a fresh investigation style…

*** many thanks to Bookouture for my copy ***

About the Author

Carol Wyer garnered a loyal following as an author of romantic comedies, and won The People’s Book Prize Award for non-fiction (2015). In 2017 she stepped from comedy to the “dark side” and embarked on a series of thrillers, featuring the popular DI Robyn Carter, which earned her recognition as a crime writer.

The Staffordshire-based writer now has more crime novels in the pipeline, although she can still sometimes be found performing her stand-up comedy routine Laugh While You Still Have Teeth.

www.carolewyer.co.uk

https://www.facebook.com/AuthorCarolEWyer

https://twitter.com/carolewyer

Available Now!

http://geni.us/B07F4BB3RVSocial

Have a wonderful day! Berit☀️✨