I found this to be an unusual and rather unsettling book. Having said that, I enjoyed it and found it a great read.
It is a scary concept within the book and one wonders if it really could happen. There were some quite gory parts.
Very much edge of your seat stuff.

Thank you to Netgalley and Harper Fiction for the ARC of this book.
Absolutely loved this book. The author’s descriptions were amazing, so believable that they totally drew you in.
The idea of a cult is not a good one but, again, you could imagine it happening but don’t want it to. It was great the way the book melded the two storylines together.
Will certainly look for more books by this author.

Loved this book, at points I found myself holding my breath whilst my heart raced. It goes into some very dark places but was definitely a page Turner!

Two stories intertwine in this exciting tale - a cult set up to offer its followers Eternal Life, and two children lured out to find fairies in the night. DI Pearline Ottoline (really?) is the one tasked with finding the missing children, but she's haunted by other children who went missing and were never found, as well as her own abused childhood. The parents are wracked with guilty and the mother, Lily, has her own demons to settle in her frantic efforts to find her children.

The result is an exciting read, as we see the cult develop and twist leading to the inevitable need for young children to feed it. I enjoyed reading it, although more thorough proof reading would have been good - there were several instances where facts were repeated as new that the reader had already been told.

The author can certainly present some very chilling characters!

Thank you to NetGalley and Harper Collins UK for allowing me access to the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

The book starts off promisingly when two young children, Hannah (10) and Greg (6) leave their home in the early hours of the morning after Greg is promised he can see a real fairy. En-route they witness a violent attack and are chased into the woods - where they then disappear.

Lily, the childrens mother is set on doing whatever it takes to find her children and starts questioning Greg's class mates and follows her own findings.

DI Pearline Ottoline (really), haunted by a previous unresolved missing child investigation is tasked to investigate the missing children and the connection with the brutal attack of a young man.

Alongside this is the story tells of a young girl, Love who lives in the Eternal Life Community where each member is striving for purity and eternal life. This cult is lead by Uncle Saviour who Love is infatuated with which is evident as her perspective explains the community life with all its oddities and expectations.

As Pearline's investigation proceeds, they start to make links to the Eternal Life Community and the chase begins to try to identify/find any remaining members after the community closed down.

Who will find the children first - Lily or Pearline?

The outline of the story sounds great but both Lily and Pearline perspectives are repetitive and unrealistic making it hard to bond or feel for the characters. Love's perspective shows how easy it is to manipulate a child into learning/believing the way life should be lived.

Its a good story but could have been so much better.

Ok let me just start with the fact that the leading detective in this book is called Pearline Ottoline.
Yep, you heard that right.
PEARLINE OTTOLINE.
This name is not even just stupid, it's ridiculous. This thing alone makes me take one star off the rating. Honestly, the author forced my hand here and I feel zero regrets.

This book is basically told in three POVs (yes yes, I know there's one more, but it's irrelevant really): Love's (a member of a cult, Lily's(mother of the missing children) and PEARLINE's.

Lily's POV is completely pointless. Like,it brings nothing to the story. I'm not a writer, but once I've read that if a scene/sentence (or in this case POV) makes no impact on the plot then it should be removed no matter how much the writer loves it.
I've said it many times before, but I will say it again: Dear Authors, KILL YOUR DARLINGS.

Love's POV is slightly more interesting, as it shows the whole history of the cult. It would be interesting if the cult wasn't ridiculous and almost like a caricature. I can only imagine that this was not the thing that the author intended, but that's how I felt about it. Like sure, you have bunch of people super into purity and stuff, but underneath hiding all sorts of wickedness and depravity, but honestly it felt laughable at times. It wasn't scary, it wasn't creepy or idk it didn't make me clutch my pearls in horror.
The only redeeming thing about these chapters was the fact that it nicely showed how easily can you manipulate a child, even when this child is no longer a child but an adult.

I'd say that Pearline's chapters were irrelevant too, but they were needed to show this atrocity that they called "an investigation". I'm actually surprised that this police team achieved anything. If a random mother off her meds can reach the killer as fast as you then maybe you should consider a career change.
Just sayin.

Also this cover makes ZERO sense as the children look the same age while in fact two missing kids are like 6 (the boy) and 10 (the girl), so...

Overall this book promises more than it can deliver and you should be aware of that.

Thanks to NetGalley, Abby Davies and Harper Collins for the ARC of The Cult.

This book started off with real promise - two children leave the comfort of their beds in the middle of the night to go and find a fairy. Whilst on their quest they witness a murder - leaving them far more in danger than they ever realise.
DI Ottoline is put on the case and as they continue with their discoveries, they realise the missing children may be liked to a cult from the 1980s.
The book is written in duel headlines, but for me personally, I really struggled with the dark, sinister and at times uncomfortable reading of the cult. The more I read, the weirder the books seemed to get, heading towards more of a Midnight Mass storyline than I was expecting. It was fast paced and gripping, but a challenging read and as such overall not one for me.

I was sent a copy of The Cult by Abby Davies to read and review by NetGalley. I’m afraid I didn’t enjoy this novel as much as I thought I was going to. I wasn’t convinced by the chapters marked ‘Love’ as I really didn’t like the way these chapters were written, and I didn’t think that the separate chapters for each character worked particularly well in this book as there was too much time and distance for there to be a cohesive link. You knew that her experience would be from ‘The Cult’ of the title but this formula just didn’t work for me this time. I would much rather have had the build up of life within the cult as a ‘Book One’ type scenario, moving into the contemporary part of the story in ‘Book Two’. The novel had its moments of tension but I felt that the detective, Pearline Ottoline, had too many moments of self-doubt harking back to her own past than was necessary, and the burgeoning romance between her and her colleague became quite tiresome. Not my favourite read this year I’m afraid.

This was a fantastic thriller full of twists and turns.

This book had lots of different character voices...we had Lilly the missing child's Mum, Pearline who was the detective and Love who was growing up within the Eternal Life Cult.

I have always been very interested in cults and have watched some documentaries on them...

Was really intrigued with Eternal Life and repulsed at the same time. It was very well written and I really felt like we could see the internal workings of the cult, how the members were treated and why they followed Uncle Saviour. Though I cannot understand why they would...I could certainly see their views loud and clear and the information was given to us in bits and pieces and was very well paced.

Love was a very repugnant character and I found her perspective very interesting. I enjoyed reading her story though I was of course horrified by her views and ideas.

Lilly was also very flawed and I found her the most difficult character to read...though really she should have been the easiest to read as she was the easiest character to understand. I am not sure why this was but do not think the writing was at fault...I just didn't gel with that particular character.. though you have to admire her tenacity!

Pearline was a great detective and I enjoyed watching her unravel the clues.

The story skips between timelines and characters and certainly kept me on my toes.

The only thing I wished was that the timelines were slightly closer together...I cannot say much more than that without giving too much away though.

Overall this was a great and fascinating read. I very much enjoyed it to the point that I would have liked to have seen other point of views. Specifically Hope and her story...I would have loved to have seen that.

Would very much recommend this book.

Thanks to the author, publisher and Netgalley for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Overall I enjoyed this book but it was difficult to read at first with it jumping from person to person as well as timelines., which kept me on my toes.

The book follows 2 timelines from 3 points of view. ‘Now’ where Lily’s children have gone missing in the middle of the night and DI Ottoline is the investigating officer, and ‘then’ when Love is part of a cult with her family in the 1980s. You know that the two timelines must be linked (it would be a very weird book otherwise!) – but it’s not immediately obvious how (right until the end of the book I was trying to work out what the connections might be – and failed completely!)

Both timelines start in a very hot summer – and the author conveys the suffocating nature of the temperature really well.

I have to say the cult timeline started off a bit odd – but got weirder and weirder – I didn’t like it at all, but that didn’t stop me reading or wanting to know what happened!

Similarly a missing child – or in this case children – is always worrying, and you really felt the emotion of the parents – and, particularly in the case of the mother, their unravelling…..

The book twists and turns loads – in both timelines – and the pace really builds towards climaxes. This meant I stayed interested and wanted to keep reading.

Overall a good read – so thank you Abby Davies (and the publisher and for my ARC).

I loved this book as I am a cult survivor and some of the events and feelings are very accurately described. It’s a subject close to my heart and I dislike it when people get it wrong. The author has done good research though as it’s quite realistic. It’s a good book overall.

Thirty years ago Uncle Saviour set up a commune in Devon with the aim of his followers achieving the purest life possible. He develops the belief that to attain purity he must drink a small amount of the blood of innocent children.... Decades later two children disappear and DI Pearline has little to go on - they were seen being chased into a wood but her only clue is a Venetian mask found in the wood. The plot is complex and cleverly constructed, it moves at a good pace - its a good read.

I loved how this title is written in short chapters making it an easy to pick up/put down book although at times I found myself saying 1 more chapter, one more chapter several times 😂
Getting to know the characters and give them a good shake at times was one of the things I enjoyed.
This is the 1st time I’ve read anything from this author and I am keen to explore more as I found her writing style suits me well
I enjoyed how it was written over 2 time periods. Namely the 1990’s and present
In the present timeline DI Pearline Ottoline (?) is in charge of the team finding 2 missing children all whilst resolving her personal daemons.
In the 1990’s timeline we meet cult leader Uncle Saviour bad his various cult members
I would like to thank Netgalley for the opportunity to read this title

Maybe I wasn't in the right mood to read this but the storyline didn't really grab me as much as I hoped it would unfortunately, it felt like it was trying to fit in too many different storylines to one book, and felt a bit clunky at times. Crossing between a commune set up in the 1980s to promote love, peace and compassion but slowly turning a bit more insular and sinister, and the story of some children who have gone missing in the present day. Some of the language in there felt a bit old-fashioned and judgmental, does any child use the insult gaylord now? and describing children as overweight doesn't add anything to the story but irked me

I'm sorry but this book was not for me and I struggled to finish it. I didn't like the way the book was written, with short chapters with a differing point of view in each chapter and past/present timelines. The names used were distracting and I found it impossible to connect with the storyline.

Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC.

A twisty thriller which kept me interested but did not grip me.

A commune was set up 30 years ago by Uncle Saviour - a seeming paradise which became twisted.

Present day - two children disappear and DI Ottoline has to find them as well as deal with 2 murders. After several false starts the two are linked and a race against time begins.

An interesting read - I liked the DI and wonder what demons lie in her past. I am interested in reading more by this author.

I couldn't make my mind up about this book. It has short chapters, told from different POV, so it's a fairly quick read and the plot is quite engaging. But, I hated almost all the characters. I'm sure you're meant to dislike some but even the ones you should empathise with irritated me.
Also, I'm not sure if I got this right but isn't Saviour, Charity's real brother? That would make him Love's uncle. She has to be one of the most repulsive characters I've encountered.
In the end the things I disliked outweighted the things I did like.

Such an amazing read, Tense and twisted, grabbed me from the first page to the last. I really do not want to write any spoilers as the reader needs to delve in and live the moment of immersing themselves into this brilliantly written book. Abby Davies has managed to bring the reader into claustrophobic world of abuse, secrets and cult living. I would abolutely recommend this to anyone who enjoys a psychological thriller.

An interesting story set across two time lines. One timeline focuses on a cult living on a remote farm in the countryside in the 1980s, the other in the present day when two children go missing from their home after venturing out at night. It takes a while for the two stories to link and the deeper the reader goes into the book, the greater the sense of dread about the potential outcome. A well crafted plot but the characters felt a little one dimensional and predictable.