One Last Child, by Anni Taylor, is an exciting new thriller and the first in a new series - Tallman's Valley Detectives. Set in Australia, five three year olds go missing from a preschool picnic without a trace. The children aren't seen for years, and there's little to no leads on where they could be, until they're returned, unharmed, one by one to their families. Except for Ivy - the homicide detective's, Kate Wakeland, granddaughter, and all the other children say Ivy is dead. Now the hunt is on as to where the children have been kept for three years and who was behind kidnapping them and killing Ivy.

With lots of twists and turns, relationship drama, and family turmoil, this book is a page turner that I didn't want to put down. I really appreciated that the main premise of the book was solved by the end of the book, but there was enough of a cliffhanger at the end to keep my excited for the next book in the series. I felt that parts of the book were a little bit too far fetched and too easily tied in a bow, and a couple times I struggled with too many characters, making me not quite able to give this five stars - more like four and a half. All in all a solid book that I highly recommend, especially for those who like thrillers!

Thank you Netgalley and the publisher for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

A haunting read. I couldn’t predict where the story would lead me. Weeks later and the story is still stuck in my head.

Fantastic book i couldn't put this book down i wanted to see what happened to the children, i look forward to book 2

The suspense will keep you riveted and turning pages well into the night. Great premise for a book, although it really stretches believability. 5 young 3 year olds on a school picnic seemingly vanish into thin air and the hunt for the kidnapper begins. Kate is the lead investigator eventually assigned to the case even though there is a strong family connection. She is dealing with a contentious relationship with her adult daughter which provides several “what if” dilemmas for the reader to ponder. This was a well written mystery/suspense read. Many thanks to Anni Taylor, Amazon Digital Services, and NetGalley. Keep writing Anni as you have a new fan who is looking forward to your next book.

Book 1 of "One Last Child." This book will keep you turning the pages right until the end and keep you guessing. Fantastic read. I can't wait to read more of Anni Taylor.
Will Detective Kate find Ivy and the other children?
Set in Australia with Detective Kate Wakefield and five missing children from her granddaughter's school. Ivy being one of the missing too.


Thank you to Publisher and NetGalley for the eARC

This book is a real page turner that kept me guessing right up til the end! It’s set in Australia and based around detective Kate Wakefield. Her granddaughter goes missing along with four other children from her nursery and the plot unfolds from there. There are so many twists and turns in the story and while I didn’t guess who took the children I did find the motive slightly weak. Taylor’s style of writing made for a very enjoyable read and I’ll certainly be looking out for more of her books! Thank you to netgalley and the author for a fantastic read!

A great story which had me guessing till the last page. I enjoyed reading this book and I am looking forward to reading more from Anni

While I was perusing Netgalley looking for ARCs to apply for I came across One Last Child by Anni Taylor it was available right away and it looked like my favourite kind of mystery, so I snapped it up.

This book was bloody brilliant! It checked all my boxes and as a bonus it’s set in Australia. I’m quickly learning I love mysteries and thrillers set in Australia. The vastness of the country really lends itself to creepy, eerie storylines.

In this story five toddlers go missing from a daycare field trip and return 3 years later. Five kids mean five sets of parents so there ended up being a few characters that I just did not like but that’s par for the course and didn’t damper the story or pace one bit. When I first started reading this, I thought it was going to be typical of the genre but Anni is a master at throwing curveballs. Her placement of the red herrings was extremely impressive. I don’t set out to try and figure out the twist when I’m reading mysteries, it just ruins the fun, but sometimes the author just makes it too obvious. Not in the case! I audibly gasped when everything started to unfold. I wish I could unread it so I could read it again.

After reading this I thought wow what a great first novel. I can’t wait to see more from her… Then I did I search on Goodreads only to learn that this is NOT her first book but her FIFTH! WTF! Why is no one talking about this woman??? Only one of her book’s clocks in under four stars and even that one is averaging a 3.98 Needless to say I have my eyes on her entire catalogue and I am counting the days until my book buying ban is up.

My thanks to the author, publisher and NetGalley for a free ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.
Well written with lots of suspense to keep you turning the pages.
I found that the perpetrators had so much luck on their side. During the summation, I thought: seriously, all these coincidences and phobias and bad supervision of young children, all conspiring to aid in an almost perfect crime. Hats off to Detective Kate Wakeland for cracking the case wide open.
I rate this one a 3.75 out of 5.

Wow! This was a fantastically gripping read with a plot twist of 2 that I didn't think of let alone see coming !

Can't wait to read more by Anni Taylor.

5 out of 5 stars

I love a good murder mystery, and this detective story did not disappoint! Detective Kate Wakeland is FINALLY allowed on the task force that has been searching for three years for five missing children - one of whom is her granddaughter. As Kate works to uncover what happened to the three children that fateful day, she also deals with family issues and uncovers several secrets that have been hiding in her town.

I loved the pace of this novel. Taylor kept the plot moving swiftly, adding just enough side plot to keep all characters interesting while not overwhelming the reader with unimportant information. The occasional narrator shifts at first seemed jarring, but they were always necessary and revealed exactly the right information at the right time.

I teach 7th graders, so won't recommend it for them, but I am going to recommend it to several teachers, as well as our high school ELA teachers to add to their classroom shelves for independent reading.

Thanks to NetGalley for this.

This is really an incredible domestic thriller. To be fair, I don't think I've read too many of these, but the twists and turns this story takes really took me for a ride and surprised me. The pacing is incredible, especially for something that clocks in just under 500 pages, and the writing is great, too. All-around an outstanding read, and I cannot recommend it more highly. I look forward to reading more of Anni Taylor's work in the future, and especially picking up future books in this Tallman's Valley Detectives series.

Synopsis from Goodreads below:
It was summer in the mountains when five small children vanished from their nursery school picnic. The heat was stifling that day, the tinkle of an ice-cream van in the air.
Three and a half years later, in the dead of winter, the children are returned by their abductor... one by one.
All except for Ivy - the granddaughter of homicide detective Kate Wakeland. The other four children say Ivy is dead.
Speculation grows that the kidnappings were revenge for an offender that Detective Wakeland put in jail years before.
She engages in a battle of wits between herself, the kidnapper and the cold, vast expanse of mountains in between.

It was the summer when the Five children vanished
It was the winter after three years that they returned
All except ivy
Who had ivy
And why

Fantastic read. It had me hooked from the word go. Great plot where your heart was actually racing reading it. Empathy billowing out. This is one you won’t wish to put down

An excellent plot and a well written domestic thriller. Set in Sydney's Blue Mountains, homicide detective Kate is the grandmother of a kidnapped child, one of five children abducted at the same time. A bit slow to start and a few red herrings thrown in but a good read. My first read of this author and I look forward to reading more. Thanks to Net Galley for my ARC.

I absolutely loved this book! It had everything I look for in a good read - an interesting and likeable main character, a 'real'-seeming world, lots of suspense, and that hard-to-define page-turning quality. Oh, and humour! It kept me up late at night reading 'just one more chapter'...!

I didn't guess the culprit. The plot was very clever, with lots of surprises.

My only (very slight) reservation is that the main character's relationship with Ivy wasn't fleshed out very much - I would have cared a lot more, I think, about the outcome if it had been.

Still a definite 5 though!

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the chance to read this wonderful book.

I was lucky enough to have the chance to read the latest novel by Anni Taylor.
This one is called ' One last Child' and it doesn't disappoint.
Kate Wakeland is a homocide detective who has to deal with a situation where 5 three years old disappear from a nursery. This is a hard enough case without the fact one of the children is her own granddaughter Ivy.
The book has raw emotion which pulls you in and I felt genuine distress for the families and also for Kate. Trying to remain professional and also support her own family.
About two thirds through it all starts to pull together and the case seems to make headway. But for a twist that turns it in a completely different direction
What an excellent read!!

I enjoyed the first quarter of this story but then it became unrealistic and unlikely in the extreme. I’ve read a lot of the other reviews however and I am in the minority so the book will undoubtedly be a success. I can see it’s merits but for me it only rates a three star.

My first by this author and it will not be my last!

The premise was extraordinary - not one child abducted, but five! All at the same time from the same day care outing and not a clue as to how they disappeared. Even worse, one of the children is the granddaughter of a local homicide detective, Kate Wakeland.

Kate is an excellent main character. She is an older woman, very experienced in the job, happily married with a supportive husband and no apparent alcohol problems. I think she might be a workaholic but I am not going to hold that against her. In other words she is a pretty normal woman. Hooray say all of us who are finding ourselves tired of all the traumatised cops we normally get in this genre.

The rest is just a great story with lots of surprises, a couple of red herrings, heaps of police work, some delightful references to places near Sydney, and a satisfying ending. Very well done and I recommend it to anyone who likes a really good mystery.

A detective story which was a little bit different. I liked the characters and how they developed. Never guessed who done it till the author told me.