This was Linwood Barclay at his best. What starts as an interesting situation surrounding Miles diagnosis of MND swiftly turns into a fast roller rcoaster of a ride. Excellent believable characters mixed with a plot that gets more complicated with every turn. The only criticism I have is why did Miles brother photographthe list, his wife was surely going to see it. But without that scene the book would have taken us on a bypass away from the main plot.

Another brilliant book by Linwood Barclay. This was one of the most heart-stoppingly intense books I have ever read. A complete thrill ride. Highly recommended.

Miles Cookson has just been given news that he didn’t want or expect. He’s been diagnosed with Huntingdon’s Disease which is hereditary and degenerative. A multi-millionaire app designer, this is something that all his money can’t put right. But Miles has no children to leave his fortune to. Gilbert, his brother, has a wife that Miles neither likes nor trusts so he’s out of the picture. But, although Miles has no legitimate children, he fathered 9 by being a sperm donor in his younger days when he was desperate to make enough money to buy a new PC. Now he sets out to find them to, firstly, warn them that they may have inherited Huntingdon’s from him and also to tell them that they will have a share in his fortune. He acquires their names by clandestine means and sets out on his quest to do the right thing. He begins with Chloe Swanson who lives the nearest.
Chloe Swanson is also looking for a long lost relative, her father, as she was conceived via a sperm donor. She sent away for a DNA testing kit from a website and discovered that she has a half-brother living not too far away called Todd Cox. She contacts him and they meet up.
But, when we meet Todd, he’s making a living, if you can call it that, by scamming elderly residents in local care homes out of their money as he sits in his trailer home. But this is his last ever call as two detectives, a man and a woman, burst in and inject him with a deadly substance. As he lies dying they bundle him into a body bag. ‘ 2 down. 7 to go’ says Det Rhys Mills to his colleague, Det Kendra Collin, as they begin to expunge all traces of Todd from the trailer and this world.
In NYC, one of the city’s most prominent movers and shaker, Jeremy Pritkin, is supervising the installation of a classic Winnebago into the top floor of his palatial brownstone house. Such is his influence that he can stop the traffic to do it. A peerless socializer, Jeremy’s parties are legendary and his address book bulges with all the people that he knows. People who like to meet his group of beautiful, willing young girls. The opportunities for blackmail are there for the taking. Until a phone call from his sister reveals a secret from his past. He’s also about to discover that he has relatives that are unknown to him.
Miles and Chloe meet in the diner where she works and after her initial shock they go to meet up with Todd but discover that he’s gone. Not only that, his trailer is suspiciously clean and reeks of bleach. And he’s not the only one to have vanished. Someone’s methodically going through the list and removing them. Forever. Is this coincidence as they lived all over the USA or does someone else want them out of the way to get their hands on Miles’ fortune? Does the doctor who owns the sperm donor clinic hold the key to it all? Will Miles and Chloe find the others in time? Or will the killer find Chloe first?
This was an absolute rollercoaster of a book with so many double crosses and twist and turns that I just couldn’t turn the pages quickly enough. A well crafted book with its central themes of money, identity and fatherhood. It was a mazelike plot which the author was in full control of with several plausible suspects and I was hooked from the start. The reader is led up one blind alley after another before all is revealed in a terrific climax. There are several suspects and I was kept guessing right up the end. The characters are believable and convincing and I could guess the inspiration for Jeremy Pritkin. If you like fast-paced thrillers with an original plot line then Find You First is for you. Recommended.

Billionaire Miles Cookson is the owner of an incredibly successful tech company. Life seems to be going his way and he's on the up and up. Recently though he's been experiencing a few health issues. Believing his symptoms to be the result of stress and overwork, he's devastated to learn he's actually dying.

Unmarried and without children to bequeath his vast fortune to, he remembers 24 years earlier donating sperm to a fertility clinic for a bit of extra cash to make ends meet. Discovering he has nine offspring and needing to know if they've inherited his illness, he decides to track them down. He also wants to make them beneficiaries of his will. But someone is getting to them first. One by one they're disappearing. And it's as if they never existed.

Having recently enjoyed a few of Linwood Barclay's earlier novels, I was really looking forward to Find You First. I thought it was an excellent fast-paced thriller. With an unusual plot that requires the reader to suspend disbelief at times, it was a gripping page-turner that captured my imagination. The race against time scenario kept the tension mounting until the very end. And what an ending it was — in a nutshell spectacular!

This was a high concept wild ride, with a plot that centres on the potential goods and harms of using commercial DNA testing to trace the family tree and a whole lot more. Eccentric millionaires, car chases, life and death decisions without all the information in front of you, and two totally engaging young women in Nicky and Chloe. No-nonsense prose, pacy plotting, everything you want for reading well into the night!

Miles, a super rich tech mogul, finds he has a life threatening disease. He has never had any legitimate children but sets out to find any children created from a sperm donation at a fertility clinic, with the possibility of getting to know them and to leave them some of his fortune.
But someone doesn't want him to meet them and one by one, they are being killed.
Full of twists and turns until the finish to reveal the killer. I did feel it was a little coincidental at times but the details about fertility clinic issues, and how the super rich can manipulate people to suit themselves gave it an extra star.
Worth a read. One to borrow from a library rather than buy though

This book had me hooked from the beginning, and I could not put it down. There were a few twists and turns and I did not guess the outcome. Highly recommended

Miles Cookson is one of the good guys in the world. He is a self-made millionaire and single, but he has heard that he has a genetic condition that will eventually kill him. As a young struggling student, he had been a sperm donor, so he is determined to discover what ‘children’ he has out in the world. He intends to leave his money to them and let them know that they too could carry this devastating gene.


What a refreshing storyline this was. I liked Miles straight away, even with all his money, he didn’t see himself as better than anyone else. He enjoyed the luxuries it brought with it but valued people for who they were not what they had. On the other end of this spectrum is a couple of young people trying to find their biological father.

I enjoyed getting to know the characters in this story and picking out the similarities and differences of nature and nurture amongst them. It is a very twisty story full of surprises and shocks that caught me out time and time again. It wasn’t a book that could be put down because it felt like I was up against the clock.


The story revolves around money and how the characters view its worth. It brings out the best and the worst in people. A complete story that ties up all the ends. A great book.

I wish to thank Net Galley and the publisher for an e-copy of this book which I have reviewed honestly

Thoroughly enjoyed this book. Great plot, interesting characters and fast paced. I flew through this in a couple of sittings. Definitely a recommended read ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Thanks to HQ Stories and Netgalley for the arc copy of this book.
I absolutely loved this book. It twists and turns and there are a lot of strange and quite interesting murders and characters involved as always with Linwood Barclay but it delivers more than you could want from a story. I really enjoyed it and the ending was delightful. Very different from Elevator Pitch but just as amazing. Can’t wait for his next book.

Find You First by Linwood Barclay is a 'go to' read for would be sperm donors. I think most of us have read about mix ups in donor clinics, this novel imaginatively creates a scenario where a terminally ill man, as rich as Croesus, has need to make contact with his progeny before he dies. He meets his match with feisty Chloe, who through her own endeavours has made contact with her half-brother but there's trouble ahead! With a twist that throws the search in to a tail spin we find it isn't only Mr Croesus who wants to find his children but their motive is to eradicate them!
Whilst it's not the most sophisticated thriller I've ever read, it certainly is highly entertaining and never once dull.

Thoroughly enjoyed this usual thriller. With many twists until the very end, it kept you guessing all the way through. A few grammatical errors that need amending. An easy read which I would highly recommend.

As a late arrival to Linwood Barclay’s novels this book was a pleasant surprise. There was an interesting plot line using what at first seemed a well-trodden path - the sperm donor ‘parent’ looking for his offspring following his diagnosis of Huntington’s disease. So far, so ordinary, but Barclay introduces a separate, parallel plot that begins to intrude on the efforts by the donor ‘parent’ to trace his children. To say more would possibly spoil the plot, so I’ll leave the details for readers to discover in their own enjoyment of the novel. What lifts this thriller above the ordinary is Barclay’s ability to develop real living and breathing characters that almost walk off the page. Couple this with the deft laying of false trails in terms of the unknown hand who appears to be interfering with the search with lethal outcomes for some players and you have the makings of an enjoyable page turner.

As with many novels in the thriller genre the reader needs to be prepared to suspend disbelief from time to time, but this never gets in the way of the mounting tension at key moments in the book; in similar vein some of the action described can probably only occur in the hands of a series of highly capable stunt men and women - oh and a clutch of CGI special effects maestros! This isn’t a complaint - it all makes for a rollicking adventure and a pleasantly balanced denouement. Highly recommended if you’re looking for a few hours of well-told fiction that won’t be mistaken for high literature, but most definitely is the work of a master storyteller on top of his game.

As with all of this authors books, this is a well written suspense thriller with plenty of twists and turns, interesting characters and plot line with a story that holds the attention throughout.

Find you First is a fast-paced thriller, which I really enjoyed reading. Miles Cookson is a wealthy businessman who donated sperm at a fertility clinic, when he was young and needed the cash. Following his doctor confirming he has Huntington's Disease, he decides to track down any children he has fathered to warn them there is a 50% chance they may inherit this disease and to leave them an inheritance in his will. Although he would like to leave his business to his brother Gilbert, he doesn’t want Gilbert’s manipulative money grabbing wife, Caroline, to get her hands on his wealth.

Miles obtains a list of the nine children from the clinic and teams up with 22 year-old Chloe Swanson, the first person on this list, he has contacted. Chloe has already been in contact with her half-brother, Todd, also on the list and a visit to Todd's home reveals he has disappeared in strange and suspicious circumstances. Miles then discovers other children on the list are disappearing and it becomes a race against time to work out what is happening and get to them first.

There are several threads which interlink as the plot twists, including one around a wealthy and powerful man, Jeremy Pritkin and I found it interesting how it tied up at the end and liked the ending.

Well another good read from Barclay although I will say not as fast paced as some of his other books.

This is about a tech millionaire who discovers he has a disease and it will end his life. When he was younger he donated sperm and wants to connect to the children from it as they are his heirs to his fortune. Unfortunately as he searches it appears that someone is killing the heirs but the just who and why?

It is an interesting book that starts out as a mans desire to do something when he knows he life will end soon. It picks right up though once you realise there is something else going on and people are getting killed. We follow Miles the tech billionaire as he tries to find his children then is in a race to discover what is going on and who is killing them and just why.
Well written as ever by Barclay that keeps you interested all the way and has a mystery in as well. Yet to read a bad Barclay book and this is definitely worth a read.

A story of this generation where DNA, surrogate children and clinics that have dealt with sperm donations. are an acceptable feature of society .This has resulted in ability of children to trace their parents and parents their children , not always easily but for those with enough money, where there is a will, money will find a way. Often a race to find blood relatives related to a health problem in order to save lives, unexpectedly this book is a story of a sperm donor tracing recipients to advise of both illness and potential life changing inheritance.. A race against time with several young adults candidates for life changing information. Where some will benefit, the law of averages means others will lose out and this becomes the premise for a cat and mouse hunt from our protagonist to find and just as many people to destroy all evidence and individuals standing in the way of fate and fortune. A two sided hunt, one for engagement and another focusing on annihilation of traceable blood relatives. Linwood Barclay never fails to deliver an unconventional take on any situation and raises many issues rising from scientific breakthroughs and availability of knowledge in the 21 century. A thought provoking storyline enhanced in a dressing of crime and murder. Many thanks to publisher and NetGalley for this ARC.

This definitely doesn’t disappoint I found it very addictive and had me hooked from the very first page I thought the story was very clever about a millionaire Miles Cookson who was diagnosed with Huntingdon’s disease and instead of enjoying his last years he tries to track down his children to see if they have it but it’s not all it seems there are so many turns in it you just can’t stop reading I want to thank Netgalley and the publisher for an early read of this fabulous book.

📚BOOK REVIEW📚⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️.5
#findyoufirst by @linwoodbarclay @hqstories @netgalley

After not enjoying this authors last few books as much, I’m happy to say I really enjoyed this one!

As usual, Linwood puts so much content into his book; you follow multiple narratives and experience many twists and turns along the way, relaxing as they all come to a complete conclusion.

Mystery and suspense were maintained easily, the chapters were short and snappy, jumping through the multiple stories which made the book fast paced and kept you constantly on your toes, wondering what’s coming next.

It did take me a little while to get into it at the beginning and overall I felt some parts became obvious towards the later half of the book but minor things in an otherwise excellent read!

➡️for synopsis

This is an #arcread so thanks to author #linwoodbarclay #hqstories and #netgalley for allowing me to read this one early!

Due out Feb 4th!

-Emily @the_book_girls_1

Another great novel from Linwood Barclay - I was disappointed with his last one - Elevator Pitch but he is definitely back on form with Find You First. This book is about fertility clinics and DNA testing a interesting and original concept. Miles Cookson is a tech millionaire who finds out he has a terminal illness that could be passed down to any offspring. Over two decades ago, when he was struggling to buy a new computer, he sold his sperm to a fertility clinic and wants to find any children he could have unknowingly fathered. The story that unfolds is fast paced with many twists and turns along the way and kept me enthralled until the end. I particularly liked the characters and felt invested in their journey to find the truth. Would highly recommend to anyone who enjoys a well written thriller.