When the lifeless body of a nun is found beneath the Humber Bridge, Detective Hollie Turner can’t help but wonder – who would want this frail, elderly woman dead? As she starts to delve into the victim’s personal life, Hollie discovers that the woman, Sister Brennan, ran a local mother and baby home at the Church of St Mary and the Angels. The unit may have shut down years ago, but the heartache of those who were forced to give up their babies remains.

The case hits an emotional nerve for Hollie, who was barely twenty when she became a mother. Determined to uncover the secrets in the home’s dark past, Hollie finds an old photograph of four girls who were there at the same time. Each had their babies taken from them; each has their own harrowing story to tell.

But just as Hollie is beginning to crack the case and link vital clues to Sister Brennan’s murder, an elderly priest is left for dead in his home. Facing her most complex investigation yet – one steeped in decades of betrayal – can Hollie find the killer before they strike again?

Kindle | 276 Pages | 40 Chapters | Lunchbreak Read over 5 Days

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I feel like I set myself up for disappointment in a way because I read this book slowly through a week of lunch breaks. However, upon reflection having now read this book…it wasn’t disappointment but frustration that became my overall feeling.

Again, this book was an impulse 99p buy and from the premise I felt like it was a good book with a lot of promise. Of course, the story of abuse in mother and baby homes isn’t an unknown theme. It was something that happened in real life and something that has been visited a lot in crime thriller books. It is sad that this occurred and that it affected so many lives in a negative way.

This book is a dual narrative between the present from DI Hollie’s point of view and 1974 from Many’s point of view.

There are some books I read in my lunch breaks that I can’t stop myself from reading, this was not one of those books and I found myself starting to feel like reading it was becoming a chore. However, staying true to my promise to finish every book I start, I persevered.

DI Hollie has transferred to Hull. Her family is breaking up. She misses her children. She has choice words for her husband. She is fighting jealous officers and starting afresh on a new patch. She is a flawed character which often works well in crime thrillers, and it makes the reader feel more at home with the character.

As an avid crime thriller reader, I know that in long series it can become a little ‘hard to believe’ how the main character solves all the crimes. Having the character be flawed takes away a little of that frustration and makes the character more approachable.

I didn’t learn much about Hollie as a character. I learned about her family but that was the only pressing point through the story. I never felt connected to her or even to the dual narrative.

My knowledge of the mother and baby homes from 1950-1980 is completely from documentaries and online articles. I cannot imagine what it was like to experience it first hand or what it was like to discover you were a baby of that time. As horrid as the scandals of the mother and baby homes are, using this as a plot topic does make the book relatable.

The most mind-fuckery moment of this book which has irritated me to high-heavens was the ending.

Those that know me will understand entirely but, for the benefit of those reading this, have you ever seen A Chorus Line? It’s a musical, and it has some pretty good songs but it’s one failing – in my opinion – is that the story ends in the middle. There is no definite ending or resolution. It just ends. Like writing 10 out of 20 chapters and never returning.

This book also does that. I suppose some people could argue that it ends on a cliffhanger but no, it really doesn’t. The book is only 276 pages. It made me feel like the author either ran out of steam and didn’t know what to write next or, blindly thought this was a good literary decision. It makes little sense to me because it’s not a point in the story where I would think ‘oh wow, I must read on to find out what has happened’. There was nothing exciting about it and with the vagueness of what parts of the plot were uncovered, it didn’t make a big splash or come as a surprise in any sense.

Will I read the rest of this series, absolutely not.

If you’re looking for a short read and you don’t mind the structure holes that I hate, then you might enjoy this book.