Slow burner that gripped me at times. Other times not so much. Story dragged out the conclusions far to much.
Overall though its an ok read and I would give her next offering a chance. Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the chance to review it.

When I first started reading When They Find Her, I wasn’t sure it was the book for me. I’m not sure why initially as once I’d read a few chapters I really got into the whole plot. It’s well written and I found myself completely immersed page after page. Thank you to NetGalley, Penguin Michael Joseph UK and the author for the chance to review.

When They Find Her by Lia Middleton was immediately disturbing and shocking. The initial tease of something untoward happening is then brought into doubt as Naomi’s apparent use of strong sedatives and extreme anxiety. Lia is very skilled at painting lifelike credible characters who invoke strong feelings in the reader. The friend who betrayed Naomi and seems intent on undermining her again. The ex husband who abandoned Naomi for her best friend and took their daughter too. Lia builds sympathy for Naomi yet we are left guessing throughout the book about what really happened. The reveal was a surprise, not what I expected. The storyline deals with postnatal depression, isolation anxiety and vulnerability very well in a way which results in compassion for Naomi. A good read Four stars

A gripping well written book that held my interest throughout with good characters and I can definitely recommend.

Thank you to Netgalley and Penguin Books (Michael Joseph) for giving me the opportunity to read this book.

Wow I really didn’t expect to love this book so much! I was instantly hooked because the story got going straight away which I really appreciate in a thriller. It is so well written that I had so much anxiety reading it because I really felt for the main character, Naomi.

This debut novel has to be one of my all time favourite thrillers and I can’t wait to read more by Lia Middleton!

An amazing debut story from Lia Middleton. Highly recommend this book which will keep you guessing throughout.

Naomi and Aiden are happily married and have a little girl together, Freya. Their lives are complete. However, at the start of the story it soon becomes apparent that things had turned sour. Naomi and Aiden are estranged - Naomi lives alone and Freya (who is now 4 years old) lives with Aiden. After Naomi has Freya stay overnight a terrible accident occurs and Naomi panics. She lies and tells everyone including the police that Freya has gone missing.

This is a highly emotional story and you can feel the anguish of Naomi throughout as she battles her demons. From about one third through I couldn’t put the book down I was desperate to know how it would all pan out.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for an advanced read copy of this book in exchange for an honest and unbiased review.

When They Find Her is a confident and striking debut from Lia Middleton. Written from the perspective of young mother Naomi Williams, the novel explores the consequences of a terrible event and a subsequent lie that Naomi feels she has to tell.

Naomi’s story unfolds with a high level of drama and tension, amid settings that - for all their comfort and cosiness – become stark viewed through the prism of her loss and her history. An empty farmhouse backing on to lonely snow-covered woods presents an isolated backdrop in which most of the action takes place. The reader feels like they are there, wandering the rooms and observing everything that takes place.

The characters are painted with utter realism, and the police and legal procedure is impeccable (as you’d expect given the author’s experience.) What sets the book apart is the deep insight into Naomi’s troubled mind, her doubts and worries and her perception of the world. There is a wider theme too – a very pertinent one - of how an individual who has struggled with mental illness can continue to be judged by others in a negative light because of some past episode. They are never allowed to forget it and the consequences of that can be catastrophic.

All these ingredients feed into a gripping story that is at times moving, often startling, and always believable. It becomes harder and harder to put down and I couldn’t resist a final two-hour binge to find out what happens. Highly recommended.

This book kept me guessing until the end. I thought I’d figured it out halfway through but it surprised me!

I found myself really feeling for the protagonist, which is, to me, a mark of a well-written character.

I also really liked the pace of the book. The fact that the back story was told in increments really keeps you engaged.

A good read!

I love a missing/murdered child thriller (this makes me sound very callous but I’m a sweetie honestly!) and so I was immediately attracted to the blurb for When They Find Her. But I didn’t expect to be so swept away by a storyline that delivered something very special and refreshingly different to the normal formulaic plot-line. I don’t particularly walk to talk about the plot at all due to that as I would hate to reveal any spoilers and reduce the shock factors for readers that need to come to this book without any preconceived ideas. What I will say is that it’s a heartbreaking, tense and utterly absorbing domestic suspense with a first chapter that is shocking and unpredictable. And after that brilliant start, When They Find Her just gets better with each chapter until it reaches its breathtaking climax.

So I’m sorry to leave you hanging a little but please believe me when I say you need to read this book especially if you have similar reading tastes to me! For a debut author, Lia Middleton has carefully crafted her characters and placed them in an horrifically unimaginable scenario that kept me guessing until the very end. Highly recommended by me!

A difficult book to review...
The first half was really interesting but a bit slow.
It started with Naomi who finally had a long awaited overnight stay with her daughter, that ended in disaster.
The second half of the book was much faster and if anything, felt too rushed.

I would have liked to have read part of it from Aiden and Helen's point of views.

Where to begin?

Being very,very careful of revealing any spoilers as this is a book of twists and turns at break neck angles is a good place to start.

Naomi has achieved perfection in her life, or at least, she thinks she has.

The role she has always been ready and waiting for, that of mother to a beautiful baby, wife to a husband who adores her, a well established career and caring friends.

What could possibly go wrong?

From the exit from the maternity ward, the book takes a super sharp turn to now, where Naomi is living on her own in her family's farmhouse, her daughter is 4 and living with her now ex-husband and his new wife.

This is where it starts and as you are trying to piece together just what has happened from Naomi's memories and what is happening now, tragedy strikes.

One small lie, unbelievably falling from the narrator's lips, escalates into an avalanche of accusations, misdirection and arrests.

Who is telling the truth and who is lying?

As the search for the missing child turns increasingly desperate, the ripple effects of years of anxiety, expectations and waiting to be found out takes it's toll on a fragile woman and her distraught ex. This is such a moving, and terribly sad examination of the pressures which mothers place on themselves to attain perfection, the way that they view themselves is so heavily influenced by impossible standards, which, if truly examined with honesty, are absolutely unattainable.

All you can do is your absolute best, and admitting that parenting is so much harder than it is possible to anticipate that asking for help is not a sign of weakness, is the first step towards forgiving yourself for not being the pefect parent.

At its core, this is a police procedural, a whodunnit with an unreliable narrator that you nether the less feel so empathic towards.

As everything tightens around Naomi to the point where she is convinced the only solution to the events of the first time she has had her daughter over night are a total and abject failure to keep her daughter safe, your heart just breaks for her. At the same time, it is totally possible not to condemn her for actions taken when completely in shock, and it is totally believable that she finds herself backed into a corner by this.

I find it hard to say that I enjoyed this book, that feels like the wrong adjective to use given the nature of the story being told. 'When They Find Her' is a novel of suspense, heart, and a deep, abiding sense of humanity and ultimately, a sense of forgiveness. She, Freya, is waiting for resolution and justice, her very essence permeates the pages of an outstanding debut where reader and narrator alike, desperately sift through the available evidence for answers which make for uncomfortable, and uneasy reading.

Naomi is a flawed yet likeable character, her first person narration puts the reader inside her mindset creating an empathic link between both parties despite her apparent unreliability to recall the events that led up to her separation and alienation.

Highly recommended for those who enjoy the works of Fiona Cummins, Gytha Lodge and Jane Casey, I am very much looking forward to seeing what Lia writes next.

Divorced parents....a past...a sleepover gone wrong! When little Freya stays at her emotionally unstable mum and then gets found dead, her mother panics and tries to hide the body....but secrets can never stay hidden ! A good gripping book!

Lia Middleton’s experience as a barrister adds authenticity to this, her debut novel entitled ‘When They Find Her’. This fast-paced novel’s heroine, Naomi, made a serious error of judgment and has had to relinquish her much-loved daughter to her husband and his new wife. She looks forward so much to an overnight visit by her daughter, but things do not end well. So what has Naomi actually done to find herself in such a precarious situation? Middleton maintains a tight, taut hold over her readers as she slowly reveals more about Naomi. Touching on serious issues such as prescription addiction, postnatal depression and bereavement, this is not a novel that shies away from uncomfortable truths. An engaging read, and I would very much like to thank the publishers (Michael Joseph UK) and NetGalley for the ARC provided free in exchange for this honest and unbiased review.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. The first half was quite slow but the latter was very fast-paced and I struggled to put the book down. I loved the ending although I did question some of the “procedures”. I know it’s fictional so I forgave the details and enjoyed the story. I loved Naomi and how I got to see her thought processes and began to sympathise with her.

Naomi is having her 4 year old daughter, who lives with her father, with her for the night. She puts her to bed and the next morning finds her dead at the bottom of the stairs. With no recollection of the night before and no clue to what happened to her daughter, she panics and decides to lie, telling everyone her daughter is missing. But what will happen when they finally find her? How will she explain what happened?

This book was very good in some respects, but fell short in others. I liked the raw emotions that permeate the pages, the author was able to make you feel the anguish the mother felt as she tries to deal with the death of her daughter. The ending brought unexpected and a welcome revelation. I think the story dragged a lot in the middle section, where the same thoughts were repeated over and over. It was a good representation of the obsessive nature of Naomi's thoughts, however it made the book a bit boring. Overall a good debut and I'm looking forward to reading more from this author.

I would like to thank Netgallery and the publisher for sending an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

When They Find Her is a haunting, intensely powerful, emotional and nerve-shredding debut psychological thriller about a desperate mother, a tragic accident, and a terrible lie which spirals out of control. The prologue starts with Naomi and Aiden Williams watching their perfect newborn daughter, Freya Grace Williams, born on 16 August and weighing seven pounds two ounces, as she sleeps in Naomi’s arms. Having just been born in hospital they are about to head home with her for the first time. Strapped in and on their way, Naomi can't quite believe how lucky she is to have such a gorgeous family. But it isn't to last. Fast forward to four years later it's November and Naomi and Aiden are now divorced and he's living hours away from her along with Freya and his new wife in London. She lives alone in what used to be their cosy farmhouse and having lost a custody battle is having to fight tooth and nail just to get to see her little girl again. Finally, the day has come when he's open to the idea of Freya staying overnight with Naomi and she is so eager to see her daughter once more. She has to scrap for every little bit of time spent with her but she's worth every effort in her doting mother’s eyes. Aiden arrives at the farm to drop an excited Freya off and makes her promise that she is no longer taking ”the pills”. Even then Aiden is wary and is threatening to put a stop to it all and just take her back home, which would be really cruel, believing it to be a bad idea. But the long-awaited sleepover goes ahead.

Together mother and daughter play with bubbles, using almost an entire bottle of bubble bath, and read Alice in Wonderland in a cosy little book nook. Little does Freya know that she's soon to become a big sister as Naomi and her partner, Rupert, are pregnant. There's certainly no love lost between Aiden and Naomi now and he always comes across as arrogant and as though he has a superiority complex, which is a world away from the doting, ever-loving husband she had once known and adored. Naomi reads Freya a bedtime story and she falls soundly asleep. Getting ready for bed mum slips one of her usual turquoise coloured pills but soon she is sure she can hear high-pitched crying from inside the house. Or is it the drugs? She cannot tell the difference between reality and fantasy, fact and fiction and has a feeling she might live to regret taking them, so she heads to bed to try to sleep off the effects, believing the cries to be merely auditory hallucinations, but are they? This is a compelling and absorbing domestic thriller that is fiendishly twisty and has huge visceral depth to it and character. I was moved from the beginning and this meditation on both the pressures and preciousness of motherhood ran through, and underpinned, the whole enthralling narrative. It's a deliciously dark, topical and utterly gripping read and is at once a white-knuckled page-turner and an emotional depiction of motherhood and mental health, it packs a real punch in terms of emotional resonance but also remains dramatic —not an easy balance to strike. Highly recommended.

Naomi has begged her ex-husband for the chance to spend more time with their 4 year old daughter, but the long awaited visit ends in disaster. Naomi has no recollection of what has happened, but panics that the blame will land with her.

Against her better judgement, Naomi calls the police to report her daughter missing, and sets wheels in motion that she soon regrets. Flashbacks to hazy memories and more distinct recollections of Naomi's early motherhood show the stress that new parents can fall prey to, and how easy it is to slip down without support.

Im not sure if I 'enjoyed' reading it, due to the subject matter, but it was well crafted and kept me intrigued. I would be wary of recommending it though in case it led to reminders of post-natal depression etc.

Naomi lives alone on the family farm, but it wasn't always that way, she used to have a doting husband and a beautiful little girl, until one day she made a terrible mistake and lost everything, Aiden and Freya now live somewhere else with his new wife. Aiden has finally agreed that Freya can come to stay for the first time and Naomi is determined to make a good impression, but the visit ends in tragedy and Naomi does the only thing she thinks will stop her losing anything else, she lies, because telling the truth is so much worse...

When They Find Her is told from Naomi's perspective over the space of a week, with flashbacks to four years earlier, it focuses on the topics of mental health, anxiety, bereavement, betrayal and prescription drug addiction. The plot is so well crafted, you would never believe it's a debut for this talented author. She slowly dripfeeds the story, always holding back on what Naomi did to make Aiden take their daughter away. Then just as he's learning to trust her around Freya, she loses her all over again. Middleton created suspense throughout the book and kept the reader guessing, it's an intense read with an unexpected ending. This author is definitely one to watch and I look forward to reading more of her work in the future.

I'd like to thank Netgalley and Penguin Michael Joseph UK for the approval, I will post my review on Goodreads now and Amazon on publication day.

I’d like to thank Penguin UK, Michael Joseph and NetGalley for giving me the opportunity to read ‘When They Find Her’ by Lia Middleton in exchange for my honest and unbiased review.

Naomi and Aiden are divorced, their four-year-old daughter Freya living with Aiden as he doesn’t trust Naomi to take care of her. Naomi persuades him to let Freya stay with her overnight but when she wakes the following morning Freya is lying at the bottom of the stairs dead. Naomi can’t remember what happened and scared that the police will believe she’s to blame she tells a lie that will have long-lasting repercussions.

Lia Middleton has written a fantastic debut novel that bodes well for her future writing. ‘When They Find Her’ has all the ingredients of a first-rate thriller, suspense, intrigue and drama, with twists and turns that have kept me on the edge of my seat unable to stop reading, needing to know whether Naomi has been telling lies or the truth. It has an ingenious and well-written plot and believable characters and the conclusion came as a big surprise. This is an excellent thriller that’s had me totally gripped from start to finish and I’m really looking forward to reading the author’s next novel.

This is a really clever domestic thriller.
At first I could not believe the decision Naomi made and it annoyed me at the start of the book. As the story progresses I kind of understood why she lied but it still didn’t sit quite right with me.
I can’t say too much about what happens as it would be a huge spoiler but the story centres around Naomi and her ex husband, and something that happens one night.
The last part of the book really had me gripped and I loved how the truth was finally revealed.
This is a great book that I’d highly recommend.
Thanks to Penguin Michael Joseph UK and NetGalley for the opportunity to read this book.