Happy Hump Day Everyone

We’ve made it to the middle of the week and that always feels like an achievement at the moment. All of the days, weeks, months seem to blur by in one big lump of time in lockdown but we are oh so nearly there. Thankfully I have been very well entertained over the last couple of days with this audiobook.

Book 📖

I didn’t know what kind of thriller I was getting into with this audiobook so it was a little bit of pot luck. I love reading new authors so the fact that this was a debut thriller was what attracted me to it. Thank you to @MichaelJBooks and @liamiddlet0n for this advanced copy of When They Find Her in returned for an honest review. When They Find Her is due to be published on 25th March 2021 and you can get a copy here.

Description 🔖

Naomi had the life she’d always dreamt of since she was a little girl. Until it wasn’t that anymore and her husband left her, along with her baby girl. She’s given what she understands to be a huge opportunity when her ex husband allows her to have their daughter overnight and she is desperate to prove her trust worthiness.

Except it all goes terribly wrong when there is an accident and Naomi finds herself tangled in a web of lies she can’t seem to extract herself from. The lie that she tells is bad enough in itself, but what’s worse is that she has no idea what what the truth really is.

General Thoughts 🤔

When people describe a book as unputdownable I always think it’s just a tag line for sales. But there is no other word I can think of that fits this book better. I quite literally could not pull myself away from it. I listened to this book well into the night with my eyes dropping but just couldn’t find one of those moments where you think it’s a good time to pause.

There was no friendly, happy intro with this book. The unthinkable happens pretty much right away and I sat listening with my hand to my mouth and my breath held. The storyline is the stuff of nightmares and I spent so much time feeling claustrophobic, tense and terrified for what was going to happen next. This book was a rollercoaster and there was nothing that I didn’t like about it. Bold statements!

Characters 👫👭👬

I don’t do spoilers in my reviews so I want to be super careful what I say here. I think to be safe, it’s best that I just discuss my thoughts on the main character; Naomi.

My feelings towards Naomi shifted and changed as the storyline progressed. I went through empathy, anger, sympathy and pride. Not in that order and probably different emotions at multiple times. What Naomi went through would be every mother’s nightmare, but would every mother react in the same way? I’m really not sure. I found her to be a complex character and I think she was written brilliantly.

Writing Style ✍️

I always feel in awe of authors that can write in a way that is compelling and gripping without a moment in the book that feels like it’s just there for context. Lia Middleton has achieved this magnificently with this book. To create such tension through words is amazing. I particularly enjoyed that not only was I kept wondering about what was going to happen next, I was also trying to piece together what had happened in the character’s histories.

I listened to the audiobook of When They Find Her and the narration was such a perfect fit. Charlotte Ritchie (the narrator) IS Naomi Williams and I will not be told otherwise. She did such an amazing job of injecting even more life into the narrative.

Conclusion & Scoring 🎖️

If it wasn’t already obvious, I fell in love with this book. I was already ranting about it to friends when I was only a couple of chapters in. It’s one of those books that I’m sad to have finished because I want to do it all over again (without knowing what’s going to happen). What a fantastic debut from Lia Middleton; I cannot wait to see what she pulls out of the bag next.

😍😍😍😍😍