I really liked reading this book. Starts off with a bang and never lets up. A good twist at the end that kept me guessing until the twist was revealed. A great debut and I will look forward to the next book from this author

An excellent, gripping and strong debut. Would recommend as it’s a breath of fresh air in this genre.

A little girl went missing years ago.

Read page one, and you won't stop, guaranteed. A child was stolen twenty years ago little Sammy Went vanishes from her home in Manson, Kentucky an event that devastates her family and tears apart the town's deeply religious community.

Kim Leamy, an Australian photographer, is approached by a stranger who turns her world upside down he claims she is the kidnapped Sammy and that everything she knows about herself is based on a lie. How far will you go to uncover the truth, In search of answers. Kim returns to the remote town of Sammy's childhood to face up to the ghosts of her early life. But the deeper she digs into her family background the more secrets she uncovers and the closer she gets to confronting the trauma of her dark and twisted past.

The initial premise is a fascinating one, to imagine that you are not who you have always believed yourself to be, what emotions must that stir up?. Plenty of twists and quite a few red herrings will keep the reader guessing right up to a very dramatic climax. A very impressive debut novel.

A dark and gripping debut.

Many thanks to NetGalley and HarperCollins UK for a copy in return for a fair and honest review.

Thanks Netgalley and the Publisher. This is a good debut novel thriller based in Australia about Kim. Well worth a read

I really enjoyed this book. The ending was a surprise which I always enjoy. A really different tale; sneaky as a serpent ;0) I will have to remember this author

Almost from the first page I knew I was going to like this book. Imagine a stranger approaching you to tell you that they thought you had been kidnapped nearly 30 years ago from another country! This book follows the journey of this young woman to find her real roots and is written in the now and then - it was great!

Definitely recommend.
Thanks to NetGalley for my free copy.

There were more twists and turns in this book than your average rollercoaster. You think you're ahead of the various narrators as the story unfolds, only to find time and time again that you were just as off base as they were.

The first one, which sets the premise of the entire book, happens so early on that you know that there's going to be no chapter left unused.

The descriptions of college and university photography students' projects made me laugh - having been there it was very accurately portrayed!

Do some of the themes feel a little familiar? Sure, it's a mystery book about a historical kidnapping. However, it's a solid debut novel and nonetheless brings plenty new to the table.

My only real criticism is that I want to know more of the aftermath, following the final reveal and the previous relationships of the characters involved in it!

3.5/5*

(4*: I really enjoyed this book. Would happily look for more from this author, and will recommend the book to others.
3*: A decent read. I'm indifferent to reading more from this author but might still recommend the book to people who are interested by the description.)

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC in exchange for an honest review!

Well this was a fantastic read! What a great premise - a two-year old child was taken twenty-eight years ago and that child was you!

Such a well-told story, set in small town Kentucky, where a strange religious cult has a strong foothold, it was told in the now and then format, so as Kim discovered more about her background, we found out the backstory of the people she was meeting. So much tension, such believable characters and a fabulously dramatic ending. Loved it!

This is a debut crime thriller set between the present day in Australia/America and the early 1990s in Kentucky.

Kim has lived in Melbourne all her life. Or, so she thinks. She is approached by a stranger one day who seems to think she is involved with the case of a missing child almost thirty years before, little Sammy Went who vanished, aged 2, in Manson, Kentucky. Only she's not just involved - this stranger thinks she IS Sammy.

This is a fast, action packed thriller that I couldn't put down. It goes back and forth between the events of 1990 in Kentucky and the present day investigation between Melbourne and Manson. I went into this fairly blind and thoroughly enjoyed it, I'd highly recommend you do the same.

Fantastic, a really well written thriller and something fresh which can be hard to find in this genre. Thanks to the publisher for granting me access via NetGalley.

The Nowhere Child feels like a cross between Gillian Flynn and Jane Harper. Both write excellent mysteries and Christian White is no different. Atmospheric, and filled with plenty of twists, this is one that will surely keep readers guessing. If you're looking for your next addiction, this is the one for you!

Wow! I loved this book. Dark and creepy but with fantastic characters. I felt for Kim/Sammy who despite having a wonderful upbringing with a loving family discovers she was a kidnapped child. The back and current stories are compelling as you are stunningly lead to the conclusion.

When Kim is confronted by a man who claims to be her brother, telling her he thinks she is his kidnapped sister her whole life is turned upside-down. Who is she really and who can she trust?

I’m really torn in writing this review because on paper The Nowhere Child is a really good book. It has an interesting plot with lots of twists and turns, the story is told through alternating chapters of past and present which drip feeds you all the information you need through different narrators. The backdrop is a good picture of grungy, small town living, destructive family dynamics and weird cults mixed in with a mystery story of what happened to Sammy Went. In all ways I should have really enjoyed it but in actuality I just found it a little bland and forgettable. It’s taken me ages to write this review because I didn’t really know what to say. It kept me entertained for 3 days while I read it but I wasn’t hanging on every word or staying up until late at night and tearing through the pages like I usually do for a book that really grabs me. It was just missing a certain spark to light my imagination; perhaps because I didn’t really feel much for the characters which made me less invested in the plot.

Overall I found The Nowhere Child to be an okay read, it was just missing a certain something to make it truly special. Thank you to NetGalley & Harper Collins UK for the chance to read the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Oooh I do like a bit of Australian crime/suspense fiction. This takes us from Australia to the US, too, for an even stronger international flavour.

Kim is happily living her life in Australia when a man approaches her with a picture of a toddler who went missing in America more than two decades ago. Then he claims she IS that child! Her mother, who would have all the answers, is dead. Her step-father is still getting over her death. Her young sister can't know anything? What can she do?

Kim ends up flying to America for answers, where she learns about the cult the missing child was born into, the new family she might have, and the splits within it.

This is a strong debut, and I admire the writer's choice not to drag out certain elements out, which keeps the story rattling along. The only sliiiiight issue was that I wish the main character could've sat down with her Australian sister/step-father for a proper conversation before she went overseas, but then there would've have been as much of a story to tell.

Naturally, I had to stay up late to finish it (though I always find suspense books difficult to put down past the midway point) and I was pretty satisfied with the end. I'd read another by this author.

This is the real deal. Gripping, surprising and well written. Like any thriller there are parts that you need to suspend belief in but overall the plot was tight, characters well developed and the story gripping. Loved the stuff about the Church of the light . It is very different from The Dry but also excellent. Only small gripe -not sure the title does it justice as it sounds like a run of the mill thriller and it is far from that.

I loved, loved, loved this book! I read it in one sitting and was desperate to reach the end and know what had happened. The story was brilliant and I really enjoyed Christians style of writing. I cannot wait for the next book.

Thanks to NetGalley and to Harper Collins for providing me an ARC copy of this book, which I freely chose to review.
I’ve read quite a few books by Australian writers recently (Liane Moriarty, Jane Harper, Liza Perrat), and although very different, I enjoyed all of them and could not resist when I saw this novel, especially as it had won an award Harper’s first novel The Dry also won.
Although part of this novel is set in Australia, it is not the largest or the most important part of it. This novel is set in two time frames and in two places, and the distance in time and space seems abysmal at times. The novel starts with a bang. Kim, the main protagonist, an Australian photographer in her late twenties, receives an unexpected visit and some even more unexpected news. This part of the story, the “now”, is narrated in the first person from Kim’s point of view, and that has the effect of putting the readers in her place and making them wonder what they would do and how they would feel if suddenly their lives were turned on their heads, and they discovered everything they thought they knew about themselves, their families, and their identities, was a lie. She is a quiet woman, and although she gets on well with her stepfather and her half-sister, and she badly misses her mother, who died a little while back, she’s always been quite different to the rest of the members of her family, and enjoys her own company more than socialising. There are also strange dreams that bother her from time to time. So, although she does not want to believe it when the stranger tells her she was abducted from a small town in Kentucky as a little girl, she is not as surprised as she should be. At this point, we seem to be in the presence of a domestic drama, one where family secrets are perhaps a bit darker than we are used to, but the plot seems in keeping with the genre. And most of the “now” section of the book is closer in tone and atmosphere to that genre.
But we have the other part. The “then”, written in the third person, from a variety of characters’ points of view. Readers who dislike head-hopping don’t need to worry, though, because each chapter in the “past” section is told from only one character’s point of view, and it is quite clear who that is, avoiding any possible confusion. The story of the background to the kidnapping, and the investigation that followed, is told from the point of view of members of little Sammy’s family, the sheriff (I really liked him), neighbours of the town, and other characters that at first we might not grasp how they are related to the story, but it all ends up making sense eventually. This part of the novel feels much more gripping and dynamic than the other, and although we don’t always follow the characters for very long, the author manages to create credible and sympathetic (or not so sympathetic) individuals, some that we get to feel for and care, and even when they do some pretty horrible things, most of them feel realistic and understandable. And the story of what happened in the past makes for a pretty dark combination of thriller and mystery, well-paced and gripping.
I don’t want to give too much away, but I must say the town of Manson of the novel is a place that seems right out of a dark fairy tale, and I kept thinking of the opening titles of the TV series True Blood (not because of any supernatural thing, but because of some of the images that appear there). While some of the scenes seem typical of a small town in the middle of nowhere, others reminded me of Southern Gothic novels, and, a word of warning: there is violence, and there are scenes that can be terrifying to some readers (although no, this is not a horror novel, the author is not lying when he says he admires and has learned a lot from Stephen King). The story is full of secrets, red-herrings and confusing information, clues that seem clear but are not, and Kim/Sammy is a woman who keeps her emotions to herself, understandably so considering the circumstances. I am not sure many readers will connect with Kim straight away because of her personality, but I understand the author’s choice. If she was an emotional wreck all the time, it would be impossible for her to do what she does and to learn the truth, and the novel would be unbearable to read, more of a melodrama than a thriller or a dark mystery. The part of the story that deals with the present helps reduce the tension somewhat while keeping the intrigue ticking, and although it feels slow and sedate compared to the other part, it does ramp up as they dig into the past and the two stories advance towards their resolution.
Without going into detail, I can say that I enjoyed the ending, and although I suspected what was coming, I only realised what was likely to happen very late in the story. Despite this being the author’s first novel, his screenwriting experience is evident, and he has a knack for creating unforgettable scenes. This is a novel destined to become a movie, for sure, and I’d be surprised if it doesn’t.
This is not a typical mystery or thriller, and although it has elements of the domestic noir, it is perhaps more extreme and darker than others I have read in that genre. We have a very young child being kidnapped; we have murder, extreme religious beliefs, prejudice, postnatal depression, a dysfunctional family, snakes, secrets, lies, child abuse, and more. If you are looking for an intriguing read, don’t mind different timelines and narrators, and are not put off by difficult subjects and scary scenes, you must read this one.

Just wow. Could not put this book down. This plot line is unimaginable for a parent and you really feel the anguish that Jack Went gives off when Sammy is gone. Your heartbreaks for what they all go through. I had an idea of where the kidnapper came from and why but wasn’t sure of the who. A fantastic story.

This is definitely a writer to watch out for as he can certainly tell an intriguing tale that draws you in from the start.
When Kim is approached in her home town in Australia by a man called Stuart who tells her that her real.name is Sammy, that She was abducted 28 years ago from Manson USA and he is her brother, her life is not surprisingly turned upside down. The story continues in alternating chapters of Then and Now where the mystery of what happened begins to surface leaving the reader with just enough evidence to think they know who was involved and what transpired until another snippet of information is thrown in to the mix to cast doubts again. I love this types of mystery that keeps you dangling right until the very end and even then manages a final twist. A very good read!

As an Australian, I congratulate my compatriot for an engrossing read. I grew up in Melbournebut have lived most of my adult years in the UK. I have a feel for displacement as Christian so eloquently describes for our nowhere child/adult.
I understand that Christian has spent time in the movie/TV genre. The book mirrors the changing scenes in a movie, with focus on the main character then pan shots to the overall picture. As in a movie, Christian does not provide every detail and explain everything, leaving it to the reader to wonder and fill in.
We watch lots of films about state crimes where the FBI are called. I kept wondering about the efficiency of the US police. How did the Americans disappears easily. What about border control in the US and Australia? False identities.
So while I stayed awake, lapping up all the twists and turns of this book, I kept questioning and thinking beyond what we were given. I think this added to the read and left me at the end, saying to myself, "Phew, I can relax now. It's a fictional thriller."

This had me enthralled from the outset.

Very different & unusual storyline which captured my imagination. Maybe just a little too much with the snakes scene!

Thoroughly recommend & look forward to the next offering from Christian White.

4.5 stars