With much newspaper reporting in recent years dedicated to reporting into insidious cults that exploit vulnerable individuals, Abby Davies’ fictional account of one such group, entitled The Cult, is certainly topical and contemporary. I picked up this novel with high expectations, but the often immature dialogue and lapses in prose made persevering with the narrative a chore at times. We are introduced to DI Ottoline, tasked with locating two children who have disappeared from their home, who encounters a hidden community, shocking abuse and more secrets than any of us will encounter in a lifetime. So as not to spoil any reading experiences, I will not reveal more but can only say that this is a twisted and unusual read – with the caveat that I wonder why some of the biggest blunders of this novel were not picked up during its editing process. Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for the free ARC I was given in return for providing this honest and unbiased review.

I thought I enjoyed this book as I was reading it but as I came to write this review 24 hours later I could remember nothing about it.

I read the blurb but even that was not enough to bring back the story. Finally I re-read the final six chapters. I remembered it all at last.

So, this is my book equivalent of Chinese food. Read it once and a few hours later empty and ready for more.

2 young children go missing from home in the middle of the night . Quite a way from home a witness says they were seen running in to the woods pursued by 2 men after witnessing a savage murder. D.I Ottoline is in charge of the investigation and after a man's body is found in the woods with nasty injuries the only clue found is a Venetian mask . As the investigation carries on it leads to members of a cult founded by a man known as Uncle Saviour who after a while became obsessed with "Eternal Life" , along with his younger wife Love they tried to achieve this by drinking blood . It turns out that Uncle Saviour had been killed some years prior to this and the cult dispersed back in to normal life . All clues lead to this cult and following the police cars the children's mother Lily enters the farm where the cult previously been based , with shocking consequences . A really gripping read with many twists along the way.

A thrilling read! This was disturbing, horrifying, terrifying… but gripping. The writing meant I could really imagine the setting for this tale and I didn’t really want to imagine some of the characters!!!!

This book started really well but seemed to lose its way around the middle. The opening chapters were pacy, well written and exciting, but the later ones were confused and seemed needlessly wordy and repetitive.

In this Story, we learn the history of the cult from the viewpoint of Love, a child growing up in its clutches. At the same time, children Hannah and Gregory are missing and the police along with their desperate parents are hunting for clues to their disappearance. As readers we know these two things are linked, we just need to find out how!

There are too many characters for my liking, especially in the ‘present’ chapters. I don’t feel that they added anything other than padding. The older chapters are better. More concise and each character serves a purpose for inclusion. The second half of this book let’s it down- it needed to maintain the pace and thrill of the earlier chapters rather than sort of petering out at the end. Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for my copy of this book.

Overall a good read - it was pacy and kept me interested till the end. Not sure we really need the cop romance storyline but other than that it was good.
I thought the actually 'cult' stuff was well written - lots said without spelling it out.

There's something about a cult being at the centre of a book or film that is just INTRIGUING!!!!

I really liked this one!!! I'm a big fan of multiple perspectives, and in this book we get yhe perspective of all sides of the story, which gives a really good insight as to what's going on. There's nothing missed that way!

I enjoyed Love's chapters alot, as they start from age 6 (1987) so we get a past/present day perspective too.

I found myself trying to guess what was going to come next, and got it wrong, and I actually liked that because it means that it was unpredictable!!! Hard to find when I have read so many thrillers!

Part one is slightly slower paced than two and three, but not in a way that I found boring to carry on with. It just includes much of the foundations for the book interms of explaining the cults start, and the disappearance of Hannah and Gregory in the present day.

The epilogue was BRILLIANT!!! But I wont say anymore👀👀

Thanks so much to @instabooktours and @abbydaviesauthor for providing me with this great book to review!!

I knew this book was going to be about a cult, obviously! But it went down a route that I did not expect, which was creepy and made me feel uncomfortable. The opening chapters left me feeling anxious, and by the end, my heart was racing. All the things you want from a thriller!

The story is told via two timelines, which come together at the end. This does give you a hint on where the story is going, but I was fine with that because you don’t know all the things. I loved how the first few chapters of the book are about the children, and then you are just in the dark; you don’t know what has happened to them, and you need to get to the end to find out.

The author is very good at pulling on your heartstrings and creating a sense of unease and tension. The final chapters are short, frantic and fast-paced. I have to say I shed a tear or two at the end, which is not the usual thing that happens to me when reading a thriller!

Like Mother Loves Me (if you’ve not read this, do! It’s brilliant), The Cult is a real page-turner. I thoroughly enjoyed it. Abby Davies – Please write more books (no pressure, obviously!).

I would like to thank Netgalley and HarperCollins, HarperFiction for an advance copy The Cult, a stand-alone psychological thriller set in the southwest of England.

DI Pearline Ottoline leads the hunt for two children, Hannah and Greg Woods, who have disappeared from home in the middle of the night. Her investigation leads her to believe that their disappearance has links to a local cult.

Perhaps it is my own fault that I misinterpreted the synopsis. I thought that I was getting a police procedural investigating a cult when two children go missing. Instead it is all about feelings and reactions and that’s not my thing. I prefer a real mystery and the guessing that goes with it.

I lost interest in The Cult early on and struggled to get through it. It is slow to start, building a picture with several unlikely events, to settle into a narrative of panic and flailing, from both Pearline and Lily, the children’s mother. This is the “now” and is interspersed with a varying timeline starting in 1987 where an initially six year old Love documents her upbringing in a cult. I found this incredibly uninteresting, using all the well known tropes of brainwashed cult thinking, with no redeeming or nuanced insights.

To be fair, the author does a good job of engendering tension, although that only works if the reader is invested in the outcome. I don’t think the main characters allow for much identification as Love is obviously a psychopath, Lily is off her anti-psychotic meds and Pearline is suffering from low self esteem and a lack of confidence.

The Cult sounded really promising, but the actuality didn’t work for me.

Somewhere, buried in this concept, is a good story but I'm afraid this isn't it. Exposition heavy and repetitive to the point of ridiculous, the characters are thinly sketched characatures with awful dialogue. There's no real shock or depth to the story which feels very strongly like an unedited first draft. And the attempts to make this story what it wants to be are cringeworthy and desperately lack subtlety. I would give this a wide berth.

I’m sorry to say, I gave up reading The Cult after I reached 25%. It’s really too gruesome for me. I should have looked more closely at the description before requesting this book.

This was a bit of a mixed bag for me, it is certainly a page turner, the writing style and plotting over two timelines and 3 perspectives worked really well and there was lots of tension and suspense, red herrings aplenty and the final third when everything linked up was really, really good. It fed my curiosity about cults and the change over time of the dynamics and shift over time from a dream of harmonious living to brainwashed pawns feeding the ego of it's deluded leader and his sickening rituals.

However, I was beyond irritated by the names of the characters and by the clearly unwell Lilly charging around trying to solve the case. I would have liked to know more about Pearline's (please call her Pearl in future!) backstory and would be interested to see her character developed and see her tackling more cases in future books as hers was, for me, the strongest part of the story .

As I said a mixed bag for me but many others have loved it.

Many thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for the opportunity to read and leave an honest review of this book.

Thirty years ago, a commune was created. Led by Uncle Saviour, they aimed to achieve perfect purity...
Now, two children have vanished in the middle of the night. The only clue to their disappearance is a mask found in the woods.

Mother Loves Me being my favourite book of 2020, I was excited about the author's second novel, although I must say I was a bit wary delving into it as I'm not a fan of books revolving around cults.
However, The Cult turned out to be a gripping, fast-paced story that kept me racing through the pages.
I especially enjoyed Love's perspective.
It was a compelling and creepy story, and I really enjoyed it.

This should have been right up my street but sadly wasn't. Cults are fascinating, allegedly and the more bizarre and violent the better we are meant to like them. Full of clichés and stereotypical references this book was not the good read I hoped
The ending is horrific. The epilogue pointless. I can see why some authors might use them but in this instance it was as if the author had to finish the book, right I'll give it X number of pages and cram everyone's story in. It really didn't work. The best bit of the epilogue was the Serendipity part. Even criminals want a sort of "justice" although it's not to be condoned.
Quite a good story but good have been much better told

You know what? Cult books/stories are rarely set in the UK, they always seem to be set in the US, so it was great to see a UK version. I initially was reluctant to get into the book and I only half heartedly read it because I found the contrasting chapters between “then” and “now” irritating because I simply couldn’t figure out the link between the two. However, once I found the link I binge read the rest of the book and really enjoyed myself. I enjoyed the insight into cult life and dynamics and I really felt like I could see the characters developing and playing out in my mind’s eye as I read it. The let downs were that I felt I needed more context for Lily’s life upbringing/marriage/mental health and more importantly I did not like Juliet as a character, it felt ill-considered and rushed. That aside, great book, I had a great time.

A horror story told in two time frames, the current period, Now, and over several decades earlier Then. A young child groomed into an abduction situation with his older sister also becoming an unsuspecting victim. Parents with health and relationship issues blame themselves. A policewoman still suffering the stress from a failed murder hunt for a missing child several years previously is in charge of the investigation,. Intent on finding the culprits yet terrified she will be unable to solve the mystery of the missing children with time running out statistically on finding them alive. Horrifically, the reader is drip fed, slowly and with gradual unease, the events surrounding a charismatic man who starts a commune promising an idyllic future which gradually evolves into a living nightmare. Is is possible this amalgamation of three dimensional protagonists will successfully put aside their own issues to successfully solve the mystery of the whereabouts of the missing children and the identities of the kidnappers. Not an easy book to read with blood curdling rituals and manic behaviour perceived as normal within a totally abnormal section of society. Not for the feint hearted although a suspenseful conclusion delivered successfully with aplomb . Many thanks to author, publisher and NetGalley for ARC.

A very tense and gripping thriller! 2 different timelines collide into a story of deception, lies and manipulation. The Cult will pull you in and spit you out leaving you thinking about it long after you finished the last page.

A new author for me and I am really pleased to have discovered her and will seek out her other books.

The Cult is told from 2 points of view, Love who is one of the Cult members and tells her story from the beginning of her time in the Cult and DI Ottoline who is heavily involved in tracking down two missing children in the present day.
There were lots of twists and heart stopping moments. I would really recommend anyone to read this great book.
Thanks to NetGalley and HarperCollins UK, Harper Fiction for sending me an ARC in return for an honest review.

This book is written from the perspective of four females: Love, Hannah, Lily, and Pearline.

Love’s account is a story of her life in the Eternal Life cult, led by a man calling himself Uncle Saviour. Love reminisces of the cult’s day to day life, including their rituals and people. We meet Love’s sister, Peace, whom Love detests, and their mother, Charity. Eternal Life is a community of likeminded people who want to live in purity, away from the hubbub and noise of the society. As Love’s narrative progresses, the reader discovers how deranged and dangerous Uncle Saviour was, and what he would do in order to reach ‘Total Illumination’. This was probably my favourite part of the book, I was gripped how manipulative and devoted to the cause Love was, and how far she would go in order to achieve what she needed. I found her cold hearted and simply chilling. As the years advanced, she became even more dangerous than Uncle Saviour, all fixated on power and lust for eternal life.

In between Love’s accounts, Davies weaves in other characters, including Lily and Hannah, mother and daughter. One morning Lily and her husband John find their children, Hannah and Greg missing. It seems they disappeared sometime during the course of the night. The police is immediately called, and DI Pearline Ottoline is assigned to lead the investigation. She is determined to find the missing children more than ever – four years previously, she was unsuccessful in locating a missing child.

However, nothing can prepare Pearline for the strength of maternal love, as Lily cannot simply stay at home and do nothing. She has a lot of issues happening all at once: a troubled marriage, exhausting career, and her mental health’s on the brink, as once again, she has run out of her medication. Lily begins an investigation of her own with severe repercussions… How far will she go in order to save her children? More importantly, can the missing children be saved? And finally, how is the case of Hannah and Greg linked to the Eternal Life’s cult? You will have to read the book to find out for yourself. It’s a well written thriller, and I was hooked from the beginning. In fact, I read the whole book in two days. I could not put it down.

for me I REALLY liked Loves POV and Lily's. The other POVs really were quite dry adn took away from this book. I loved the its a cult not a cult vibe. I love how it bled into the real world and had a quentin tarantino vibe of the village. For me this could have been a 5 star if it were only the two POVs