loribonesscaswell

On a fateful summer morning in 1986, two eleven-year-old girls meet for the first time. By the end of the day, they will both be charged with murder. Twenty-five years later, journalist Kirsty Lindsay is reporting on a series of sickening attacks on young female tourists in a seaside vacation town when her investigation leads her to interview carnival cleaner Amber Gordon. For Kirsty and Amber, it’s the first time they’ve seen each other since that dark day so many years ago. Now with new, vastly different lives—and unknowing families to protect—will they really be able to keep their wicked secret hidden?

Dollycas’s Thoughts

This is an excellent read!

One day changes the lives of 2 girls who don’t even really like each other. There turns out to be so much more to the story that never saw the light of day and definitely was not brought out by the police or lawyers. Tried and convicted and locked away. Written off by their families and left on their own.

When they are released from the detention center they are given new identities and a list of rules including never seeing each other again. That shouldn’t be hard as they had nothing in common to begin with and they were locked away in different facilities.

Then again one day sends their lives into turmoil again.

The book rotates between the present and past and the reader is just given the truth about what happened on the fateful day in 1986 in small bits and pieces. This format of the story makes it virtually impossible to put down.

The story is set in the UK and is written by a successful journalist, under a pseudonym, who has worked extensively across the British press . Other reviewers have drawn correlation to real-life cases so this author is writing what she knows or has covered. That makes this a very compelling, well written and well plotted story. It is gritty and dark and very powerful. The author made me feel a real connection with these girls. Even today, a few days after completing the book it is still giving me a haunted creepy feeling.