Come Back For Me - Heidi Perks

A shocking discovery. An island wrapped in secrets. You can bury the body but the truth will always surface...

A tiny island community is stunned by the discovery of a long-buried body.

For Stella Harvey, the news is doubly shocking. The body has been found in the garden of her childhood home - the home her family fled without explanation twenty-five years ago.

Now, questioning her past and desperate to unearth the truth, Stella returns to the isolated island. But she quickly finds that the community she left isn’t as welcoming as she remembers – and that people in it will go to any length to protect their secrets. One thing rings true…You can’t bury the truth forever.

Now You See Her was one of my favorite reads last year so I was very much looking forward to Come Back For Me. The synopsis sounded amazing, a remote island and a gloriously happy childhood don't sound like the things of nightmares but who knows what happens behind closed doors.

Stella, aged eleven, has had an idyllic childhood on the small island of Evergreen, but suddenly she and her older siblings, Danny and Bonnie, are being dragged away from the only home Stella has ever known in the middle of the night. At the age of eleven, the only thing Stella is worried about is whether she'll see her best friend Jill again and how unfair it is that they have to leave.

Fast forward twenty-five years and Evergreen Island is on the news. A body has been found. Not only that but where it's been found is on the perimeter of Stella's beloved childhood home, The Quay House. Leaving the island has fractured her family, her mother has died, her father is remarried and suffering from dementia, her sister is a mother and an alcoholic, and her brother Danny disappeared not long after they moved to the mainland. What Stella wants to know though is who is the body, and just why did they leave in the middle of a storm all those years ago.

Stella, now a family counsellor, makes the rash decision to return to the island to see if she can find out more about the body and maybe discover the truth behind their abrupt departure from their former home. Bonnie thinks this is quite possibly the worst idea Stella has ever had but it's not long before she is proved right. Somebody doesn't want Stella back on the island and it could be anybody. Her mother's best friend, the older lady who Stella's mother treated as a mother figure herself - Annie, Freya - the journalist who grew up on the island, Iona - Bonnie's best friend that last summer, anybody on the island!

Come Back For Me is told from two different points in time, 1993 and the present. We get to see Stella's family while they still were all together, and the present where we slowly uncover everything that has happened. Threatening notes start arriving and Stella genuinely becomes terrified that someone wants to kill her. It would appear that somebody will go to any lengths to keep the past very much in the past and that if there's a scapegoat to take the blame for the body, that will suit their purposes.

The tension of Come Back For Me starts on the first page and grips you all the way through to the very end. Some may find the pacing too slow and that it takes too long to get to the heart of the mystery but this is what I loved about the story. I was hooked all the way through though, I started reading at about 11pm and didn't put the book down until well after sunrise. It's incredibly atmospheric and almost Gothic in tone, the isolated island setting certainly added to this feeling as did the weather and the gloominess of the situation. I started trying to guess what had happened and who the body was but was left reeling by all of the revelations. I've never been so wrong about why something happened!

Come Back For Me is a superb follow-up to Now You See Me and Heidi's writing has proved yet again that she's one to watch. It's wonderfully written and has one of the most compelling and unique storyline's I've read this year. I can't wait to see what's next as Come Back For Me is going to be hard to beat!

Huge thanks to Rachel Kennedy & Century for a copy of the book, in exchange for an unbiased review. If you would like to read Come Back For Me it's out in hardback today and also available as an eBook. Find my review on Amazon here as well!

Come Back For Me - Heidi Perks

Publisher - Century

Release date: eBook - June 1st, Hardback, July 11th, 2019

Find - Goodreads | Book Depository | Kindle UK

About The Author

Heidi Perks lives by the sea in Bournemouth with her husband and two children.
Heidi graduated from Bournemouth University with a BA (Hons) in Retail Management, and then enjoyed a career in Marketing before leaving in 2012 to focus on both bringing up her family and writing.
Heidi successfully applied for a place on the inaugural Curtis Brown Creative online Novel Writing Course and after that dedicated her time to completing her first novel, Beneath The Surface.
She has a huge interest in what makes people tick and loves to write about family relationships, especially where some of the characters are slightly dysfunctional. 
Her second novel, Now You See Her was published by Century, part of the Penguin Random House group in 2018 and became a Sunday Times Bestseller and Richard and Judy book club pick. 
Her third novel Come Back For Me is out July 2019 and she is now writing her fourth to be released in 2020. Follow Heidi on Twitter here!

When I Lost You - Merilyn Davies

When a young couple are the lead suspects for the murder of their only child, Crime Analyst Carla Brown and DS Nell Jackson are assigned to investigate.

The evidence seems conclusive, but something just doesn’t feel right.

The case is quickly cast into doubt when the lead forensic pathologist starts receiving threatening letters – containing details only the police should know.

Who’s sending them? What do they want? And how did they get hold of the information?

As Carla and Nell dig deeper, it soon becomes clear that this case isn’t the first of its kind.

They must stop at nothing to find the truth – even if it hits close to home.

When a novel's prologue ends with the words "I did not kill my baby!" you get an idea in your head about how the story is going to go. On reading the synopsis too, you think that the book is about the couple who have lost their child and in a way it is. It's also so much more! 

When I Lost You starts with DS Jackson and DC Mackintosh called to a flat in Oxford over a reported death of an infant. Nell Jackson is convinced that it's another Sudden Infant Death but on arrival Eve Graham, the pathologist tells them it's murder, and not only that but it was the mother who killed the little girl. Nell Jackson is back at work after being stabbed thanks to a crime analyst missing a vital detail so when she finds out the new DCI wants her to work closely with Crime Analyst Carla Brown, she can't help but be resentful.

Nothing about this case is as straightforward as it seems. There are letters being written to the pathologist, essentially calling her a liar and accusing her of ensuring innocent women have been convicted thanks to her testimony. Nell and Carla aren't entirely sure what to believe as they both know Eve but what if she is getting it wrong?

When I Lost You is part police procedural and part psychological thriller, told in two different timelines simply titled Then and Now. It's quite confusing at first, especially if you don't realize that's the case, but this is what makes the story such compulsive reading. Then is about two girls living in a care home and being groomed by a local cafe owner, Now is about three women who may or may not know more than they're saying. Carla is closely linked to Eve because of Eve's husband Gerry who was her first sergeant and is utterly determined that Eve would not have deliberately allowed innocent women to be sent to prison.

When I Lost You is a wonderfully addictive story, with a unique plotline, and twists and turns that you don't see coming. I will admit to trying to guess who certain people were quite early on in the book but it soon became evident that I was completely wrong. It does become obvious at one point, who the 'guilty party' is, but this doesn't take anything away from the story and it was fascinating seeing the different strands of the story coming together to an explosive ending.

When I Lost You is a gripping tale of loss, wrongful conviction, and abuse, which if not handled in the right way, could be distressing but Merilyn Davies has created a page-turner of a first novel in a wonderful location. Having gone to Oxford it was nice to see someone write about things other than the gleaming spires and students! I very much enjoyed the developing relationship between Nell and Carla and sincerely hope we get to see more of them in the future!

Huge thanks to Rachel and Arrow for a copy of the book in exchange for my honest opinion of the book. If you want to try When I Lost You by Merilyn Davies it's currently available for the princely sum of 99 pence on Kindle UK and can be found here.

When I Lost You - Merilyn Davies

Publisher - Cornerstone Digital/Arrow

Release date: Kindle/eBook - July 1st, Paperback - August 22nd, 2019

Find - Goodreads | Kindle UK

About The Author

Merilyn Davies is a former Crime Analyst with the Metropolitan Police who worked as part of the violent and hate crime unit for eight years. She was inspired to write about strong women working in the police force thanks to the incredible women she encountered on the force and was fascinated to explore the relationship between civilians working in the force and police officers, drawing on her own experiences being married to a serving MET officer.

She decided to set her debut thriller in her home city of Oxford, but the action all takes place away from the dreaming spires in parts tourists don’t stop at. She studied Sociology at university and is fascinated with the manner in which society leads people down criminal paths. She was a co-founder of the Chipping Norton Literary Festival and now works for Oxford City Council. Follow Merilyn on Twitter @nellbelleandme