For the last month or so I've been quietly working on my end of the year blog post for my "best book of the year" and now I'm going to have to scrap everything I've already written because The Suspect has now taken top spot!
I mean wow what an incredible story, this one has everything you could ever want from a book. Normally not a fan of changing character perceptives but in The Suspect it was done with ease and kept the tale creeping on towards its thrilling end!
5/5

Lost an entire afternoon in this book, gripped me, couldn’t put it down until I knew how it ended! Another brilliant book from Fiona Barton!!

It was supposed to be the best time of their life: Alex and Rosie fly to Thailand after their A-levels to travel and party. But then, things go completely wrong and now the two girls are dead. What happened in the burnt-down-guesthouse? And where is that English boy who might have seen them last and is obviously closely linked to the fire? The parents fly to Bangkok and reporter Kate Waters comes with them to cover the story. But what they find out isn’t what they had expected: Kate’s son Jake is the wanted English boy who is now on the run and prime suspect in the murder of Alex and Rosie.

Again, Fiona Barton could well entertain me with a plot with many twists and turns and a story full of suspense. The narrative does not follow chronology and is told from alternating perspectives which I found great since it provides a lot more depth for the characters on the one hand and keeps suspense high on the other. In the end, the case is solved without leaving any questions open.

What I liked most were actually the very different characters who seemed all quite authentic to me: first of all the two young women who could hardly be more different. Quiet Alex who wants to see the country and learn about the culture and Rosie just expecting to have a good time partying. That this combination wouldn’t work out too long is pretty obvious. The girls behave like typical teenagers do on their first trip alone far away from the parents, they are careless and easily fall prey to all kind of wrong-doers. Also their mothers are portrayed in convincing ways, especially Jenny who is very bitter after her husband left her alone with the daughter.

Most interesting of course is Kate whose role changes massively throughout the story: from the nosy reporter she herself becomes the target of the press and has to endure what is written about her boy without being able of doing anything against it.

Altogether, a perfectly pitched thriller that keeps you reading on and on and on to find out the truth about what happened in Thailand.

Another warning kind of novel from Fiona Barton. The writing and detail are excellent and given her journalist background that's no surprise. She's there to twist and wring her characters through so you can see them in all their glory and their infamy. No one in the novel is particularly likeable but it's interesting the way the author questions your moral fibre from the start ( and certainly the end!)

I'm not going to give anything away of course, but I was shaking my head from the word go. When you go backpacking, or stay in someone else's country, you don't do anything these girls do - of the rest of the backpackers. They go to the seediest place, stay where one girl worries is safe enough, questions everything yet does nothing. You would hope travellers would be aware of how to travel nowadays. I feel like a granny in comparison to what I did when I went backpacking! There's no real sense of it being in Bangkok - the heat, that sense of the excitement of travel etc was lacking for me.

Apart from that - I'm still not sure how I would describe the ending. It will divide readers I think and that's the point of the novel. What would you do to protect your child? It was interesting to think Kate was the one investigating the missing girls and became embroiled in her own mystery.

A novel to give your teenager before they head off to their own adventure.