There are almost no words to describe all the emotions felt while reading S.E. Lynes latest, The Housewarming. I am blown away by the author's ability to keenly describe truly awful and raw emotions. This is a story with so many entwined lives, marriages, friendships and all contained in one very nice neighborhood.. It is also about loss and how we navigate it. It is superbly done and you couldn't stop reading if you wanted to. I cannot recommend this highly enough.

It’s hard to describe this book as at first I’d say it’s a drama about several families living on the same street, but when the truth comes out it’s definitely a thriller.
Ava and Matt are heartbroken as their two year old daughter has been missing for a year and no-one knows what happened to her.
Their neighbours thow a housewarming party following some renovations they’ve been doing and it’s the last thing Ava wants to go to. Matt persuades her to go for a short while and whilst there something is said that set alarm bells ringing concerning Abi’s disappearance.
Matt thinks Ava is clutching at straws but then he notices something that has a life changing outcome for someone close to them.
This is an addictive read as I was desparate to know what really happened and had to keep reading.
It’s a bit of a heartbreaker as well as I really felt for Ava.
A cleverly written book that I thoroughly enjoyed.
Thanks to Bookouture and NetGalley for the opportunity to read this book.

I was so looking forward to this, but it was much slower than I expected.
The first half is very repetitive and mixes past and present, which I think would have been more effective had it been actual full chapters with the differing time frames. It felt like there was no structure at all.
The grief the parents go through after the disappearance is extremely well written though and is very intense when it is being described.
The Housewarming itself doesn't even start until half way through the book, and it is over so quickly that the big comment reveal barely registered and by then I wasn't engaged enough to find out more.

Just one mistake. That’s all it took. A quick trip upstairs to get the laundry, check the phone and… Abi is gone.

Ava leaves her two year old daughter in the hallway in her stroller while she does a few household tasks and takes a look at FaceBook. When she comes downstairs, the front door is open and her daughter is gone. After a frantic search of the neighborhood and the nearby riverbank, Abi desperately calls her husband Matt who comes home to meet the police. The police, their next door neighbor Neil and Matt search all day and into the night but there is no sign of the little girl. The next morning, Abi’s coat is found in the river and she is presumed drowned.

The next year passes in a blur of grief and guilt for Ava. She had just discovered she was pregnant when Abi disappeared and now has a baby boy. She’s depressed, finds it hard to care for the baby and blames herself for leaving the front door open for Abi. She’s comforted by the patient Matt, her neighbors Neil and Bella and her neighbor from across the street, Jennifer Lovegood.

The Lovegoods live in a gorgeously renovated house built by Neil and his construction company. All the neighbors have watched the construction and are thrilled to be invited to a housewarming party. Matt urges Ava to attend and she reluctantly agrees. What happens next turns a sad family drama into a suspenseful, twisted and heartbreaking thriller. No spoilers here but things are definitely not what they seem. This is a must read! 5 stars.

Thank you to NetGalley, Bookouture and S.E. Lynes for this ARC.

A year after Ava and Matt's daughter Abi goes missing from the family home they are understandably still struggling to come to terms with it all.
It doesn't help that they still dont know what has happened to their daughter. Did she just wander off,abducted or worse?
Ava blames herself for the loss of their daughter as she accidentally left the front door open but Abi was strapped in her pushchair so how on earth did she manage to leave the house
Ava and Matt's neighbour's the Lovegoods are having a much anticipated housewarming party to show off their new refurbished house all the neighbour's are invited but Ava really didn't want to attend but Matt convinces her to go.
Whilst at the party Ava hears something that will change their lives completely.

I’m a big Susie Lynes fan, so a new book by her is always a treat to look forward to.

When Ava and Matt‘s 2 year old daughter, Abi, wanders out the front door after Ava leaves her strapped into her pushchair while she goes upstairs Ava is devastated and wracked with guilt. Despite all the searching Abi is never found and Ava is unable to move on with her life, becoming more and more isolated.

A year after Abi’s disappearance her neighbours hold a housewarming party and Ava and Matt go. As the evening goes on and more alcohol is drunk Ava learns something that changes everything.

All in all this is a great book, which when your heart isn’t breaking, will keep you on the edge of your seat and guessing. Susie Lynes fans won’t be disappointed.

I just didn't like this book very much at all but it looks like I am in the minority according to the reviewers on Goodreads. I thought the first half of the book was very repetitive and boring. The whole housewarming party was uneventful. Truthfully, I would have given up on the book halfway through if I was not reviewing it. Some of the book blurb's about this authors other books really sound interesting but I am leery about reading anything else by this author. Maybe some day I will.

I requested this arc because I really needed a good mystery/thriller for me to focus on so that I could get away from the stress my schoolwork has been giving me. I don't know what it is about British thrillers, but they read so quickly. Usually. This one took me a while to get through and it may have been because I had also read another mystery/thriller about a missing child. It could be that mystery/thrillers involving missing children is something I tend not to enjoy as much and should start avoiding these types of books, although there are some on my TBR that I am still interested in reading regardless.

I just didn’t feel invested in the characters’ stories. I thought it was heartbreaking what the parents had been going through but that was the only storyline I cared about. My investment ended there, however. I was originally thinking of giving this book two stars but changed my mind due to my enjoyment of the writing and pacing of the story. I think the choice of using short chapters added to my need to know what happened next. The atmosphere, like most British thrillers I’ve read, was good. I also enjoy reading books that have suburban settings, there is something about the rich/upper-middle-class that I find so intriguing, I constantly want to bury my nose in everyone’s business.

Overall, I did enjoy the pacing and atmosphere of the book, but it took a lot for me to be invested in a mystery/thriller about a missing child. If you do find that kind of premise interesting, I would recommend The Housewarming.

3.25/5

Twisting, Heartbreaking Suspense.....
A twisting suspense, often heartbreakingly sad, emotional and certainly often tense. Narrative is well done and misdirection cleverly performed. Characters could be more credible as could, perhaps, their actions but on the whole tension well racked until the denouement.

I really enjoyed this book all the way through. It had a really good plot, great main characters and really keeps you hooked on the plot. I would highly recommend this book.

This book was OK. That's how I feel about it. If someone asked, that's what I'd say. It was OK. Yes, it was sad. A child goes missing and a year later they find out what happened. It was all a bit incredible to me. As in not credible. When you find out some of the big "reveals" they just don't make much sense. Full disclosure, I've had something strikingly similar happen to someone I know. The way the characters acted just strained all logic for me. Who does that? I don't want to give away the underlying mystery here, but I just went, "Why didn't you just...?'" This happens all the time and people don't do what these characters did. When we find out everything, it is just disappointing and unnecessarily cruel.

This is a heartbreaking read about two-year-old Abi who goes missing from her parents’ hallway in the small village of Hampton Wick. Ava, her mother, lives in a ghastly state of limbo for the next year, not knowing what happened that day, nor whether her daughter is still alive.
The story is told from several viewpoints, include those of Ava and her husband Matt. There are secrets, twists and surprises aplenty in this awful tale of loss, grief and heartbreak.
What is Matt hiding from his wife, but sharing with his best friend, Neil? What is Neil hiding and why does he hate the new neighbour so much?
Said new neighbour, Johnnie, and his lovely wife, Jen, throw a housewarming party, to which all the neighbours throng, dying to see the renovations that are rumoured to have cost a fortune. Here, Ava learns something that ratchets up her efforts to find out what exactly happened to Abi.
S.E. Lynes seems to understand exactly what a young mother would go through in these circumstances and laid it on the pages in words that tore my heart open. This is a difficult read and I cried a lot while reading it. In her letter to her readers, S.E Lynes says that the pandemic “informed the way she wrote about Ava’s feelings, her isolation, her anxiety and her feeling of being contagious in her unresolved grief.” Perhaps this helped make her writing even more powerful and emotive.
“I wanted to explore that not knowing, the difficulty of not being able to grieve yet grieving every day,” she explains. She certainly did that – brilliantly.
The Housewarming is not only about grief and grieving, however. Above all, it’s a gripping thriller that kept me totally enthralled as I raced through it hoping to find out what happened to Abi.
As soon as I finished it I wanted to start rereading to look for all those clues I must have missed the first time around.
The book is also an indictment of the selfishness of our modern world, in which we’ve completely forgotten to look after each other.

Little Abi goes missing and a year later, there is still no sign of her. Her parents, Ava and Matt, are persuaded to attend their neighbours housewarming party along with the rest of the street's residents - all eager to see the fantastic refurbishment of the property. As the alcohol flows, things are said which makes Ava strongly believe that someone on the street knows what happened to her daughter.
The story intricately weaves the pertinent characters into the chapters, making each one feasible as the guilty person however we don't find that out until right at the end. S.E.Lynes leads the reader up a few blind alleys before we find out the truth and this makes for a great page turning novel.
I received this book as an ARC from Netgalley and my views are entirely my own.

So many emotions!! Where do I start?!? Love, mistakes, heartbreak, betrayal, hurt, and way too much pride. Every man for himself, every stone needs to be unturned. My heart broke while reading this novel. This author has captured the emotions perfectly by giving us a front row seat to the complete demise of a family by showing us the dread involved in the unknown. As a mother, this is truly the worst feeling I can’t even imagine having to battle. I’ll kiss my babies and hold them a little closer after reading about poor little Abi.
Who do you consider family? Who is actually loyal? Do you trust your friends? Give this book a shot as it gives you so much angst while giving so much closure in the end. Thank you so much for allowing me to read the ARC! It was truly a pleasure and I cannot wait to order my copy of this book as well as the others by this author.

This book definitely kept my interest and surprised me up until the very end. Some of the characters were a bit shallow but the story developed well with its set of events to solve the mystery behind a missing child. I particularly liked the character of the mother of the missing child and her growth and strength as the story went on.

Thank you Netgalley for providing me a copy of this book for review.

What an intense read
A missing Daughter, unanswered questions
You are pulled into the plot and care about Ava and Matt and what they are going through
Then the invitation to a housewarming arrives and the secrets start to unfold
You can't keep up with that direction it is going in
and when the twist is revealed GOSH it knocks you for six.

First time I have read S E Lynes, it won't be the last

Thank you netgalley, S E Lynes and Bookouture for allowing me to read and review this book.

WOW! As always a truly exceptional read! The psychological thriller genre is packed with great books but this author is one of a kind- every one of her books stands out in this crowded genre bursting with high quality fiction. And with this book she has raised the bar even higher. Just amazing. Please read this one.

Whenever I see a new book coming out by this author, I don't even read the blurb. I just click that pre-order button, and wait impatiently for the day it drops onto my kindle. Because I know the book is going to be FANTASTIC and they are. Every. Single. One. My very favourite book by S.E. Lynes is her first novel, Valentina, and I've been waiting for her to write a book that knocks Valentina off her pedestal. My wait is over. The Housewarming is utterly gripping, completely unputdownable (is that a word?), so a word of warning. DO NOT start this book until you have absolutely nothing else to do, otherwise you'll be in trouble!

So, on to the book. Ava and Matt have an adorable 2 year old daughter, Abi. Just down the street live Bella and Neil, their amazing best friends and Abi's Godparents, and next door to Ava and Matt are new arrivals to the neighbourhood, the Lovegoods.

On a morning just like any other, Matt goes off to work, and Ava, after leaving Abi safely fastened in to her buggy, gets on with her jobs, you know, sorting the washing, sitting on the loo endlessly scrolling through Facebook, the sort of thing we all do every day. However, Abi finds her way out of here pushchair, out through the front door which had been left open by Ava, and disappears without trace. It is only after a year that a chance remark made at the Lovegood's housewarming party sends Ava off on a mission, determined to prove her daughter did not just disappear, but that she was indeed murdered and Ava is going to get to the bottom of what really happened on that.

Now I don't have any children, in fact I don't really have any maternal instincts (except for my dogs, but there you go), but I can tell you, I absolutely felt every part of Ava's trauma and grief throughout this book. From the moment Abi disappears, Lynes portrays the torture felt by Ava with compassion and a realism that shocked me and kept me turning the pages long into the night. Ava's decline mentally and physically is brutal. And when the sad, sad truths of the story started to emerge, well my heart just cracked. More than once.

There is also a really strong focus in this book around the importance of friends and relationships, looking out for each other, and about how a little compassion and understanding goes a long way.

This, like all of S.E. Lynes' books will stay with me for a long time after the final page has been turned. You just need to buy it!

My review is on Goodreads and will be posted to Amazon UK on publication day.

I am kicking myself. The Housewarming by S. E Lynes is the first book from the author I have read, and I am just wondering why I have never read a book of theirs before. This is brilliant but heart-breaking story of a mother losing her child.
When Ava leaves her daughter Abi for a few minutes strapped into her buggy and she returns to find her gone with the door left open. She is devasted and she goes searching for and then also feels guilty. Did her daughter unclasp her buggy and go out the door to be never to be seen again? Did she leave the door open?
One year later, the Lovegood’s are having a housewarming party next door after having their house renovated. Ava hasn’t socialised since her daughter went missing and doesn’t really want to go but, needs to get her life back on track. So, she agrees that she will go just for an hour with Matt.
So, something is said at the party that brings back Abi’s disappearance and changes things for both Ava and Matt which hinders their relationship. Also other things come to light that makes Ava want to find out what really happened to Abi.
Thank you Bookoutre for a copy of the The Housewarming. I know I am a bit late to the party to read this one. But the great reviews I keep hearing about this, I had to read it. This is a very emotional story of a mother losing her child and the aftermath behind it and a game of who is telling the truth and who is lying. I really enjoyed this book from S.E Lynes it was so good. After reading this I will sure now going to read the other books that she has written. 5 stars from me.

What a fantastic book! When Ava’s 2 year old daughter toddles out of the open front door, she is never seen again. Ava relives this moment constantly, always blaming herself, never able to move on. On one of her first outings out of the house, almost a year after little Abi vanishes, she is told something which turns everything she thought she knew on its head.
I loved this book. The repetition of Ava blaming herself really got me inside her head and reliving that “If only” moment with her. The book was well written and had one of those endings which I mull over for hours, if not days, afterwards. Another absolute cracker from Susie Lynes.