Marriage & Divorce

I received this book for free from the Publisher in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

For fans of Adele Parks and Clare Mackintosh
'Deceptively clever... Bad Seed is a chilling portrayal of how family can go terribly wrong.' - SHARI LAPENA, bestselling author of The Couple Next Door
'I LOVED Bad Seed. Twisty, wonderfully written, genuinely gripping, shocking and compelling. Impossible to put down!' - KAREN HAMILTON, Sunday Times bestselling author of The Perfect Girlfriend
Nicola is going to die. Just like her husband did.
Nicola thought she'd gotten away with it.
Since her husband died, life has been getting back on track. She has a new boyfriend, Phil. A new home, living next door to her brother-in-law, his wife and their children. She is closer than ever with her daughter, Sarah. She even likes her job at the local shop, though she's had some time off recently with illness. The doctor says its menopause, that it's nothing to worry about. As if he could know how she's feeling.
Nicola is finally moving on with her life.
But then she receives the note. Someone knows what she did. They know the secret she doesn't even think about when she is alone.
And they want revenge.
A gripping domestic thriller told from the points of view of three women from the same family, each with their own heart-wrenching revelation.
'I raced through this brilliantly twisty tale of family secrets and betrayals which kept me guessing at every turn. Clever and creepy and difficult to put down.' Phoebe Locke, author of The Tall Man and The July GirlsReaders LOVE Bad Seed:'I loved this book! Chilling, gripping and compelling' - Amazon reviewer, 5 stars'Fast paced and totally engrossing' - Amazon reviewer'Couldn't put it down!' - Amazon reviewer

Thanks to Tracey at Compulsive Readers and the publisher for my spot on the blog tour and a copy of the book.  My review is unbiased and honest.  Today I bring to you my review of Bad Seed by Jessica Eames.  When I received the invitation from Tracey, I just couldn’t say no. The plotline of family betrayal is one I love, and this twisty and complex story compelled me from page one and endlessly turning each page until the wee hours.  This is Jessica Eames debut novel and let me tell you…she has a new fan in me.  I will from this moment on read anything this woman pens. 

At first glance the synopsis promises a lot…a death, a tragic past and a family secret.  Does she deliver?  Too bloody right she does.  We all know that we can’t chose our families, unfortunately for some of us, right?  I have a difficult relationship with some members of my family, but I can’t imagine having the problems that some of the characters in this book experience.  Its far-fetched, except, it’s not.  Nicola is a widow, she’s struggling.  She’s trying to piece her life back together after the most traumatic experience of her life.  She’s finding it damn hard.  What could make this situation ten times harder?  Her deceased husband leaving her in financial difficulties.  The situation has forced her to make a difficult decision.  She now has to live in the annex in the garden of her brother-in-law’s home.  She is very slowly moving forward, getting some normalcy back in her life and she has started dating once again.  They say that you also marry the family – well how true this is for Nicola. 

Things take a turn for the worse when Nicola begins to feel unwell.  A visit to the GP deems fruitless when they put it down to symptoms of the menopause.  Is she unwell or is there something darker at play here?  Nicola is sure things in her home have been moved or tampered with.  At every turn we have the feeling of creeping ominous shadows.  It made me want to be constantly checking over my shoulder.  Has events just caught up with Nicola and the craziness is creeping in or is someone out to get her?  Things build up to a crescendo. 

I constantly had an odd feeling.  The characters around Nicola were false and seemed difficult to read.  I wanted to strip back the layers that were between their falseness and the real them.  There was more to this, you just had to delve between the lines.  The story is told from three alternating viewpoints – Nicola, her daughter Sarah and Fiona, the Brother-in-law’s wife.  Its clever and mysterious and although I had worked out relatively quickly who committed the crime, the narrative did have me question my thoughts too often.  Secrets are exposed, family ties are broken, the twists feels relative to falling from a cliff, you the grounds going to meet you-you just don’t know how quickly.  The family was creepy, there was always something off about them.  The paranoia and fear of Nicola was frightening, and I could all too easily imagine myself in her shoes. 

I inhaled this book in one sitting.  The creeping uneasiness, the anger that you should be able to trust your family and the multiple threads happening to bring the story to life was fantastic.  The writing was addictive and suffocating all at once.  Family can mean love, but the wrong family can be toxic.