BLOG TOUR – Lake Child by Isabel Ashdown

I couldn’t put this down and finished reading it in just a day! It’s a taut, tense and edgy thriller that will keep you guessing and turning pages at high speed!

Eva wakes from being in a coma for many months. Her parents tell her she was involved in a serious car accident, but immediately, Eva senses that something is amiss. Why are her parents acting so strangely? Why are they keeping her locked in the attic instead of allowing her to sleep in her own bedroom? And why does nobody come to visit her? Where are her best friends who she spent every single day with, prior to this incident?

Eva is determined to get to the bottom of what is clearly some bizarre mystery. She knows for sure that the truth is being kept from her. Why? She doesn’t know, but she’s going to find out. Searching the Norwegian landscape from her attic window for clues, Eva builds up her strength and willpower in her pursuit of answers as to what really happened to her.

And then … wait a minute … suddenly the story changes halfway through the book, and we’re reading about Maxine, a woman in London being interviewed about her grandchild who was kidnapped as a baby and was never found. Not only is the story different, but so is the timeframe! This happened years before the original one that we were reading about. What on earth is going on and how are the two narratives related, because surely they must be.

It slowly becomes clear that Maxine is far from a reliable witness. As the interviews continue, supposedly for an ‘autobiography’ that’s being ghostwritten for her, it’s obvious that she’s conniving and dishonest and that although she clearly did have a traumatic history, she’s using this for monetary gain as much as she’s able to. But the question persists: how is she connected to Eva?

Ashdown’s writing is compelling, immediately drawing the reader in and not letting go until that final page. Her characters are well rounded and it becomes easy to understand their actions and motives as the plot progresses and is slowly revealed. There are loads of ‘aha’ moments and I guarantee you will be left shocked and breathless on more than one occasion.

I highly recommend this 5-star read! Absolutely brilliant!

Thank you to Tracy Fenton of Compulsive Readers for inviting me on this blog tour. Follow these bloggers to see what they’re saying about Lake Child …