Thanks to Netgalley for the preview of this book. It was a gripping and thrilling read. We are about to enter another 6 week lockdown in Ireland & this book distracted me from the crap news.

The premise of the book was good, I was taken in by the blurb. But the delivery was confusing and I had to struggle to get to the end. I hopped, skipped, and rushed through the entire book.
An okay read

This just wasn’t for me, I found it very slow and a little unclear in parts, making it a bit of a chore to read. After reading other reviews, I’ve found a couple of people have said the same, really sorry.

This book sounded really gripping and it started reasonably well with a variety of intriguing strands including Anna's mysterious past. Unfortunately it didn't live up to my expectations. Anna must be the most incompetent and gullible would-be spy in literature. It defines credulity that a character can become so very successful in her professional life when she is portrayed as being totally devoid of common sense.
The middle section of the book became introspective and, to be blunt, so tedious that I almost didn't bother to finish it. The ending seemed to be a rushed attempt to draw together the various strands from a variety of perspectives but was unsatisfactory.

Thanks all the same to NetGalley and the publishers for an ARC of this disappointing book.

Oh no! A book with two points of view (not my favourite). The main narrator is Anna and slightly less so, Maria an old girl friend of Anna's husband David..She also becomes a nanny to their twin daughters.

An old boyfriend of Anna recruits her to be a spy on her father in laws company, Dubious?

Until this spying mission the book wasn't too bad, but I lost it in the middle and then at the end. Anna's decision making was questionable and not entirely believable.

Thanks to Net Galley and Borough Press for the chance to read and review.

Despite this book being quite unbelievable, I found myself hooked on it and I enjoyed reading it!

We have two narrators - Anna and Maria - although Anna is our main narrator. She becomes obsessed with a man who encourages her to spy on a friend's family, and the situation soon spirals out of Anna's control.

There are lots of twists and turns and things get sillier towards the end, but it's lots of fun and I found myself nicely carried along with the story. I didn't even mind the very open-ended finale!

Thank you Borough Press and NetGalley for this book.
I liked it, I didn't like it, I liked it. I couldn't decide on this at first and then did like and then didn't like and got confused.
In the end I decided I liked it, it is in two parts and you really do second guess constantly. An excellent plot and very well written.
Can I please have the next book by Charlotte? .

I felt like I was reading two different books - the first half of the book was gripping and page turning - so promising.

The second half was hard work, boring at times and hard to understand - the ending was odd - I have no idea what the author is trying to say happened at the end.....

So much promise at the start - ultimately a disapointment :(

Married into a family whose business activities are corrupt, Anna is working to expose the truth behind Tradesmarts international crimes which have killed thousands of people. Torn between her love for David and uncovering the truth, Anna gets in too deep and her actions come back to bite her. Part of the family is told from the perspective of Anna & Maria, a childhood friend of David’s who becomes the nanny to David & Anna’s children.

I really enjoyed ‘Part of the Family’, it’s full of surprises which just keeps you hooked from start to finish. Throughout the book you see different sides to each character which leaves you torn with who is right and wrong.

I was torn between empathy for Anna as she struggles to make the right decisions due to having a trouble childhood and her parents blaming her for her brothers dead and also feeling disappointment as she has everything she could wish for and is throwing it all away on her relationship with Harry and being involved in uncovering the truth about Tradesmart.

Only gave this a 4 out 5 as the ending is a cliffhanger which leaves you with loads of questions but it means you can form your own version of what happens. I would have loved to have found out if the truth about Tradesmart was uncovered and who was at the door!! Overall a really interesting and engaging read, with twists and turns.

The novel is told from the points of view of Anna and Maria, and set between London and the Greek islands. Anna is recruited to be a spy on her father in laws company, Maria is an old flame of David's and moves in to become the nanny for Anna and David's twin girls. I enjoyed the book, but would love a follow up to know what happened to Anna and Maria in the end? Did the company get found out and taken to court in the end or not and how come we only find out at the last minute about Clive having terminal cancer - is it true or a bluff? It seems everyone is double crossing everyone in this.

Glamour, suspense, betrayal....this book should have it all but I felt let down at the final hurdle. Anna's life looks perfect. She is a gorgeous, successful editor, married to a handsome rich man, with twin daughters and a home in Hampstead. But Anna gets recruited to provide intelligence on her father-in-law and Anna herself is very complicated and insecure. Together this makes for an unstable situation and the cat and mouse game begins.

I always struggle with books when I don't like the main character. I am less tolerant of their flaws and more critical of the plot. Anna's choices didn't make sense to me and I struggled to understand her. Her life is beautifully described and glamorous, but she wasn't even living it, in a true sense. I think it was a brave effort and I was really intrigued for most of it, but I expected more from the last few chapters.

Not quite sure what the author was thinking here. It didn't really seem to go anywhere. Just the mindless ramblings of a character with a "woe is me" attitude. Not entertaining at all.

This novel revolves around the shady dealings of an international corporation, TradeSmart.

Anna, fresh out of university, is romantically pursued by David, the son of TradeSmart's founder and heir to the family business. Soon, she finds herself undertaking amateur espionage, working undercover for the mysterious Harry, not knowing what to believe or who to trust. The plot is filled with people who appear ready to cross and double-cross anyone willing to give them the time of day.

The story is told from the perspective of the two most important women in David's life, Anna and Maria. The latter being his childhood sweetheart. There are a few noteworthy plot twists which many readers will undoubtedly enjoy. However, for me, the characters driving the story were people I couldn't identify with.

When it finally came, the denouement was an anti-climax. Am I particularly dim, or are there actually loose ends left unexplained?

I desperately wanted to like this novel, the plot being potentially intriguing, but in the end the laborious style of the writing, numerous irrelevant details, and the constant flipping between the past and present made for a difficult and unsatisfying read.

How do you know who’s on your side, if you don’t know whose side you’re on?

What a question! And this book unravels it and will leave you thinking...who do you actually trust? Really?

Part of The Family begins with Anna, a successful magazine editor, meeting with Harry on a park bench in London. The story then goes back in time to tell of her student life with friends Meg and David and her subsequent relationship with David, scion of a wealthy family. Anna is recruited by Harry, who she is besotted with, to spy on David's father and his shady business interests. But she isn't the only one spying.

Anna's story is interwoven with that of Maria, David's close childhood friend who, when Anna gives birth to twin girls, becomes their nanny.

This is a rather confusing spy story and I found it a difficult read due to the way the two points of view were handled and a structure where we went from Anna for a few chapters then Maria for one or two chapters, all varying in length and rather unsatisfactory to follow.
Also too many metaphors for my taste. The writing was strong enough not to need them. The ending was strange and incomplete. What happened to Anna? What happened to Maria?

Thanks to NetGalley and Harper Collins/The Borough Press for the opportunity to read and review Part of the Family.

What a book! Charlotte has you second guessing yourself constantly with where the book is going... an excellent plot and exquisite writing makes for the perfect read.

I was halfway through the first chapter when I realized I’d read this book before, but under a different title, “The Most Difficult Thing”. It was still as good a read the second time around! Slick, whip-smart, stylish, this book is definitely one of my guilty reading pleasures. I read it in one sitting! The story is told from the perspective of 2 women, Anna and Maria and flicks between London and the Greek Islands. Sophisticated & successful magazine editor, Anna Witherall, is operating a covert surveillance operation against her millionaire husband David & father-in-Law Clive, owner of commodities company TradeSmart. Most of the book is devoted to Anna and David’s backstory, which explains why Anna is now gathering evidence against both men, who are suspected of illegally dumping toxic waste in an impoverished African country. How far will Anna go to reveal the truth and how much will she dare to lose? A satisfying ending, with lots of duplicitous twists and turns, I really enjoyed this debut novel from Charlotte Philby and look forward to her next publication.

Thanks to #Netgalley for the free ebook in return for my honest review.

#PartoftheFamily #netgalley Part of the Family is a thrilling story of intrigue and suspense; hard to put down and so many twists I began to find it hard to keep up. The story is told from the point of view of two women, Anna and Maria. Anna has chosen a difficult path, one that will involve lies, deception and danger. Maria, who’s life is tinged with a sadness, perhaps disappointment that she hasn’t achieved what she wanted. But the choices she will make will change the future for them both.
I enjoyed the story, I like to try and guess the outcome, and was pleasantly surprised that it wasn’t predictable. The change in the timeline, jumping back and forth, could be a little confusing, but nothing to difficult to keep up with when you find yourself so involved with the story.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publishers for this arc. I was intrigued by the promising blend of mixing the domestic suspense genre and spy thriller genre, and saw the wonderful quotes from authors I admire, so I was really keen to read this. Unfortunately for me this was hard to get into and I felt there wasn’t much happening until the second half of the book.
This opens with an intriguing premise. Anna who gave birth a few weeks ago sits on a bench waiting for a man named Harry. Cut several years later and she’s going to Greece for work, unknown to her family this is a ruse and Anna won’t be coming back. Then the story goes into flashback mode and we see Anna, fresh out of university, move to London with her friends where she meets Harry. Anna and Harry start sleeping together. Not long after Anna discovers Harry is a spy investigating her friend David’s father corporate business which is responsible for genocide in Africa. He asks Anna to pursue a relationship with David, so she can spy on his dad and his business...
This has potential. Ultimately for me it lacked suspense and the first half was too slow, with the story picking up in the second half, which did have plenty of twists and turns. I found Anna’s character a little naive and whiny. I found the suddenness of her infatuation with Harry unbelievable and how easily she begins a relationship with David. The whole setup felt too convenient and because of this I couldn’t connect with the characters. Also the ending was abrupt and felt incomplete. I wasn’t sure what had happened. Overall this isn’t a bad book, but it lacked a character I could emphasise with and it lacked suspense and pace. It’s 3/5.

If speed of reading is a marker of a good book (and I think for a thriller it must be), then this is one of the most gripping novels I’ve read this year. I could not put it down, and stayed up till 1am to finish it.

That said, I requested it from Netgalley because Harper PR is broadcasting a bookclub about it on Friday, and I was glad I did so, because I thought I had not understood the ending. I was left wondering:

* has the protagonist, Anna, finally lost her mind?
* has one of her two lovers come back for her?
* is she killing herself?

It was really great to read Charlotte Philly's tweet that “It doesn’t matter which. Rather it’s about the impact of the choices we make” - https://twitter.com/philbywrites/status/1256192291280228358?s=21 - and that there are another two related books to come - https://twitter.com/philbywrites/status/1256192531966156800?s=21. Hoorah! So, now that I know I've not misunderstood it all, I feel confident to give my feedback.

A key driver for this novel is discomfort. Tension builds as we become more and more disorientated. As the blurb says, whom can we trust? Surely neither of the narrators!

That said, I found the character of Anna utterly chilling. I love the way that we can tell there is something very, very wrong with her but can’t quite work out what it is. Some sort of attachment issue - she dislikes her twin and blames herself for his death, though can’t quite remember what happened; she has walked away from her parents completely when she went to university (but we can’t tell if they were truly awful or if she is just so broken she can’t understand them. She marries someone without getting to know him, while longing for the love and approval of someone else whom even she can tell is using her. She is very, very cut off from her true emotions and that makes her quite brilliant as an unreliable narrator.

Then there are the men, all of whom are simply dreadful, and as remote as she is (although how much is projection from her, we have no way of knowing). There is only one word for Harry, whom Anna believes to be the love of her life - ridiculous. When her best friend Meg exits her life suddenly, Anna doesn’t feel able to pursue her and find out why, and so when Meg returns and reveals her reasons, Anna is simply devastated, finding out things that would possibly have made her make completely different decisions had she and Meg talked sooner.

All in all, this is a great book about characters who can’t quite manage to connect with each other, or, in Anna’s case, the world. Thanks to Netgalley and The Borough Press for providing me with the ARC, and to Harper PR for organising the Twitter chat with Philby, from which I quoted the two tweets earlier. It kept me up till this time as I had to get to the end! I am really looking forward to Charlotte Philby's next book.