Beautifully written and a with a very gothic feel. This is a hugely enjoyable read which I devoured over two nights. I love Sarah Hilary and she doesn't disappoint here.

Thanks to NetGalley and Pan Macmillan for an advanced copy to review.

Nell and Joe fled their foster home and moved to the bright lights of London only a few months ago. They hoped to escape their pasts and make a new life.
Now Joe is missing, Nell is skint and can't go back to the last place they found a bed.
She begins looking for Joe and finds herself a job in the place he was last seen. It comes with some strings but she is sure she can make something of this while she looks for Joe.
This beautifully written, hypnotic, claustrophobic novel lures the reader further and further in to the intrigue and danger, desperate to know what went before and what will happen next even as you dread its inevitability. The fearful symmetry of the end will leave you gasping.

Beautifully and elegantly written, and something of a departure from her previous novels, this psychological thriller is dark, descriptive and utterly unique

With thanks to Netgalley and the publishers for the arc, which I appreciated the opportunity to read Fragile by Sarah Hilary.
This was a stand alone book by Sarah Hilary and Fragile is Nell’s story and also her friend Joe’s from when they lived together in Meagan Flack’s foster home. The storyline is very bleak and unremitting about the abusive lives that Nell and Joe had and how Nell from a young age ran the foster home, looking after the younger children, doing the cooking and the cleaning. The time when Rosie , a younger child who looked upon Rosie as her mother, disappeared and was believed to have died, although her body was never recovered.
The foster home was closed down and Nell and Joe go to London and sleep rough and then sleep in places where they can get a bed whenever they can and sleep with strangers..
I have read Sarah Hilary’s D I Marnie Rome police series and enjoyed all of them, but I personally did not like or enjoy reading Fragile, although I did persevere and read through to the end of the book. It maybe that other readers do enjoy Fragile but sadly I did not.

‘Fragile’ is a stand-alone story by Sarah Hilary. It is told through the eyes of Nell who has runaway to London with her boyfriend from the abusive home in Wales that she had been in since she was fostered as a young child following her mother’s remarriage. Their foster mother is trying to track them down as she blames Nell for her current predicament because of the death of another child. After Joe vanishes, Nell manages to talk herself into a house-keeper role for the slightly strange Robin very easily. I found it quite slow at the beginning, but it is sinister and Gothic (reminiscent of the ’Golden Age’ of writers) and found myself thinking about it long after I finished reading it.
I thank NetGalley and the publishers for the chance to read an advanced copy in return for an honest review.

A small moving book about love and revenge. I found it hard going and it didn’t flow smoothly. It’s about foster children Nell and Joe and their foster mother Meagan. It follows their story in flash backs after they ran away after the death of Nell’s sister. Rosie. .

I haven't read any of the author's previous books, so I didn't have any expectations with what her style might be and I think that helped me in enjoying this more than those reviewers that had read her previous books. This standalone psychological thriller took me a little while to get into the story of the main characters who, as the title suggests, are all fragile and broken in some way and not at all likeable. All of them punishing themselves and those around them out of guilt or the fear of being alone in their fragile inner worlds. But once I got deeper into the story and started to understand what was driving them, it was definitely intriguing and page-turning. I also really liked the ending that leaves the reader to form their own opinion of what may have happened.

I’ve been waiting with baited breath for this one, as a huge fan of Sarah Hilary’s writing I couldn’t wait to see what she had produced with her latest novel and a step into the psychological thriller genre. And WOW, let’s just say I was not disappointed! I don’t want to say anything about the plot in fear of spoilers, all you need to know is in the blurb.
Fragile is an intense and visceral read; it draws on all of your senses; I could almost taste, hear, smell and touch the words as they appeared in front of me. The visuals she created were out of this world, mind-blowing, astounding! There is a very gothic feel about this book, something akin to a mixture of a darky fairy tale combined with Charles Dickens wrapped up in a dark and heavy Gothic lace.
Each word, each sentence, each paragraph piles on the tension so thick it almost suffocated me. I became convinced the characters were stepping out of the pages and following me. Every character left me feeling uneasy, anxious almost. I honestly didn’t know who to trust and I’m not really sure I liked any of them, despite feeling sorry for them but oh my God did I love them!
Starling Villas, the house where it all takes place is a character in its own right. It came alive and invited me inside the pages to explore its intriguing and creepy interior, creating pictures so vivid they played out like a movie in my head.
Fragile cast a spell on me, I was compelled to keep turning each page, the knot in my belly growing tighter as I did. Forgotten children, broken and abused; systems that are broken and care that has forgotten how to care; imbalances of power and control; truth, lies and choices are all explored. Each little snippet drip fed with the chills getting colder and the uneasiness increasingly disturbing as the layers are stripped back and the story slowly revealed.
Fragile is not a wham bam thank you mam kind of read; rather it is a heart wrenchingly sad tale, raw and brutal in its telling. It is different to what fans of the author may be used to but it demonstrates the literary talent that is Sarah Hilary. I still have the shivers running down my spine! Step inside if you dare!

Nell is a former foster care child, a runaway, older than her years. Clever and resourceful, she emerges as an unreliable narrator. Each character she is connected to is also unreliable, or so it seems, and when she tricks her way into Starling Villas, and a housekeeping job for the reclusive Doctor Robin Wilder, her world becomes ever more strange, and dangerous. Intrinsically linked to Nell is Joe, a damaged young man, an addict with whom Nell harbours a devastating secret. When Nell moves in to live at Starling Villas, the story takes a darker, gothic style, and all is not as it seems... quite an interesting premise, though perhaps the relationship between young Nell and the peculiar, middle aged Robin requires some level of suspended disbelief. A powerful writing style, unravelling the surreal with elements of gritty realism, child neglect and broken dreams.

My first book by this writer. Captivating writing - now I know what all the fuss is 😆. Great plot and thought-provoking ending. I'll be back for more.

Sarah Hilary’s writing is known to me through her DI Marnie Rome series which I have enjoyed reading very much. I was intrigued to see what her new standalone novel ‘Fragile’ would be like, advertised as a modern-day ‘Rebecca’. However, this description is somewhat misleading, notwithstanding the fact that Hilary’s Starling Villas setting is as important as du Maurier’s Manderley.
Former foster child Nell escapes to London with her friend Joe after the death of Rosie, a little girl at Meagan’s foster home in Wales. Meagan is a heartless, negligent carer who knows how to play the system but she does have a soft spot for Joe. When he abandons Nell and returns to Meagan, the latter is determined to make Nell pay, financially and emotionally.
Meanwhile Nell, who quickly appreciates that ‘homelessness has its own scent’, has found a job as housekeeper for middle-aged Dr Robin Wilder at the neglected Starling Villas. Purporting to be leading a bachelor life, he gives Nell strict instructions on all of her duties which she carries out with tremendous devotion until his wife Carolyn returns, triumphant from her earlier seduction of Joe. Nell recognises a fellow manipulator in Carolyn and a toxic dance involving all the central characters begins.
The author references the novel’s title both specially and obliquely several times throughout the narrative. When grocery shopping, Nell explains: ‘I wanted to hold something fragile in my hands…if you apply pressure to the top and bottom of the shell, finding the points of greatest resistance, you can’t crush an egg no matter how hard you try.’ During a discussion with Robin, he explains the art of ‘’Kintsugi. The art of scars. … When a precious thing is broken, rather than throw it away the Japanese mend it with gold, or platinum. It’s stronger too, less likely to break a second time.’’ Nell is a brave girl but she is also a very damaged one, having had a very bad experience of the care system. How fragile is she? Is her nurturing purely opportunistic? Are relationships made always for her own benefit?
Sarah Hilary writes as well as ever and yet I found it difficult to engage with any of this novel’s characters. Perhaps that’s the point. Nevertheless, whilst the incomprehensible Dr Wilder and his wife are little more than cartoon characters, their house is a wonderful invention, almost a sentient being in its own right, the greasy cooker, the steep staircases, the ugly embossed mirror, the fusty dining room all oozing neglect until slowly nursed back to life by Nell.
My thanks to NetGalley and Pan Macmillan for a copy of this novel in exchange for a fair review.

This is a very strange, slow burning story of foster care, obsessive love and secrets. The characters are all deeply unlikeable and the odd surroundings add to the weird discomfort you feel whilst reading.

This book was quite confusing at times and I was left with quite a lot of unanswered questions at the end of it. To be honest, I am not quite sure what mood the author was trying to achieve. I am guessing that some readers may enjoy it but it just was not for me.

I wasn't really sure what to make of this, I have so enjoyed Sarah Hilary's other books and her more traditional crime fiction and this was a step away from that. A complicated story of foster children leaving an abusive home in North Wales, guilt for those they left behind, the foster mother seeking revenge and the meeting of two worlds, where rich meets poor, powerless meets powerful. Its very different from her other books, and maybe if i hadn't read those first I would have enjoyed this more, but it didn't quite hit the mark for me this time. Thank you anyway Netgalley and publishers for the chance to try it out

Fragile is the first book which I have read by Sarah Hilary and I found it to be very well written. The storyline is interesting especially the parts surrounding the time spent at Lyles with Rosie because to me it left a lot of questions unanswered. The story is told through Nell’s eyes which makes her a first person narrator. Woven throughout the first person narration is a third person narrator who describes events through the eyes of other characters. The mixture of first and third person narration was interesting because there is no clear indication of the different points of views.

When it comes to the characters I don’t feel like I connect or relate to any of the characters although I did have sympathy for Nell because of her horrible childhood. At times she also annoyed me because of the way she acted or the way she let people treat her. As harsh as it is, Joe reminded me of a stray dog who declared his loyalty to whoever looked after his needs. To me it seemed like he would throwaway a person when someone with more to offer him came along. To me Dr Wilder came across as having a Jekyll and Hyde personality. Because when he is first introduced he comes across as being a quiet, awkward and reserved man. But as the story unfolds he seems to become more bolder, assertive and a bit obsessive. Megan and Caroline in my opinion were just as bad bad as each other. They were both nasty and selfish characters who showed no growth or redemption.

I liked the ending because it left me wondering what would come next.

I recieved an advanced copy for free, and this is my honest opinion.

Nell’s had a tough life. Growing up in a less than loving foster home, she finds herself living in the enigmatic Dr Wilder’s house as a housekeeper, trying to track down the boy she loves. Naturally Dr Wilder isn’t quite what he seems, and Nell’s former foster carer, Meagan, is hunting her down hell-bent on getting revenge. Exactly what for isn’t initially clear...

I’m not entirely sure how I felt about this book. I’m a huge Sarah Hilary fan and love her Marnie Rome series. For me, the stand alone book didn’t work quite as well.

I found it hard to empathise or identity with any of the characters - Dr Wilder seemed weak, chauvinistic and largely unlikeable and I never felt I really understood his character or his motivation. Meagan too had virtually no redeeming features; Joe was insipid and feckless (though given his background this was pretty understandable!) and Carolyn was also pretty unpleasant.

Nell was an interesting, well drawn character and the Rosie storyline was poignant and compelling. I also really liked the ending - it felt unresolved in a good way, rather than tying things up neatly and with an unrealistic idealism.

Overall though I found the plot a little strange and very unlike the author’s previous work - at times it was a little plodding, although it was (as always) beautifully written.

I’m hoping Marnie Rome will return with another offering soon, but it was interesting to read a different type of book by the author, albeit not (for me) quite as enjoyable as her others.

My thanks to Netgalley, the publisher and author for the chance to review.

I am a fan of the Marnie Rome series but this is a stand alone thriller quite different from the Police procedural. It has a slow start as we learn about Nell and Joe’s background, but there is a secret hiding in the background. It’s a slow burn, but it kept me turning the pages until the end. It is well written and has atmosphere. It is reminiscent of Ruth Rendell and her different genres. Thanks to PanMacmillan and NetGalley for an early reading copy in return for an honest review.

Nell is a foster child and a runaway. She carry’s her secrets. She finds work at starling villas with a controlling employee who hides secrets of his own.

A dark tale of childhood lost, such a sad story. But what a page turner.

I am new to this author, but I really enjoyed her writing style. Her descriptions left me feeling like I was living Nells story.

What an unusual story. I found it difficult to read at timeS not really sure where it was going.. but then this also kept me reading! A really unique thriller