This is my first book by this author and will not be my last.

This was such a gripping read from the start it is a thriller, it is creepy in parts it is a good read that will have you on the edge of your seat. Some great characters well written. I will be checking out this authors other books

The Cult

Well - I love a thriller and the cult aspect of this book is a nice twist. We meet Love who’s family have joined a community lead by her Uncle - when she is a young girl. We see her growing up through the 90s to the present day and we see Love’s take on all the happenings at ‘Eternal Life’. Meanwhile Lily’s family is falling apart, and now her children are missing. Detective Ottoline is heading up the case of the children’s disappearance. I enjoyed this book - it was well written, not too descriptive which was perfect for this unusual set up and it kept me intrigued until the end. I felt Ottoline was a pretty weak character - we were told of some previous abuse by her father and this affects her throughout the book, I just felt it was all a bit too vague. Lily I liked - she had a lot of gumption, and Love? Well I’ll let you make your own mind up.

A cult, but not as you might expect. Most of the people living there are perfectly happy, well-fed, lots of feasts and ceremonies and no real responsibilities to weigh them down. Their leader comes across as weak and selfish rather than charismatic and compelling. I found it very hard to believe that ordinary people in this day and age, living in Kent, would subscribe to his inane (frankly risible) philosophy. The real baddie was described in interminable chapter after chapter from the age of six until she was thirty-one, making a reappearance later as the lacklustre villain of the piece.
Interlaced with chapters about the cult was the story of a police officer – Pearline Ottiline (yes, really) – investigating two missing children. No prizes for guessing who took them. She was reasonably believable but the mother of the missing children was always a couple of steps ahead of her, driving around interviewing a group of children, whose mothers didn't seem to find anything strange about a half-demented woman running up on their doorsteps and grilling their offspring.
Yet again, I am swimming against the tide in terms of reviews. judging by the volume of four and five star ratings. I'm not saying don't read it – just approach it with all sense of reality temporarily suspended and with a large glass of wine to hand.
I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

Wow, just wow - this is the best book I have read for a long time.

The Cult is told from the point of view of cult member, Love, initially as a small child but gradually catching up to present day, as well as Lily, the mother of two missing children and DI Ottoline, the detective investigating their disappearance.

Right from the first chapter, I was completely gripped. The book was so well written and the scenes described so perfectly that I honestly felt as though I was there, including experiencing all the feelings of fear and dread that came with that first horrific situation.

The characters were strong and I felt that I knew a great deal about all of the main ones; feeling huge empathy with the mother of the missing children and a fondness towards DI Ottoline.

It didn't take long for me to become completely invested in the story and I couldn't read it quick enough. I had many a late night whilst reading The Cult, desperate to read 'just one more chapter'.

Overall, the book was full of twists and turns and beautifully written, I just can't find anything I didn't like. I would highly recommend this book.

My thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for sending me an ARC in return for an honest review.

This book had a great premise,we are all drawn to books and tv shows and docu’s about acults,it is a fascinating subject….so it was already sold to me by the title
The book itself was good in parts,the police investigation was really believable and interesting but n others the writing was not for me and felt lacked depth in some characters
So a mixed bag and will give 3 Stars

I`m sorry to be giving this 1 star, I really am. I take no pleasure in giving such a low rating when an author has spent so much time writing a book.

This should have been right up my street but it soon became clear it wasnt.

The cult itself are a very nasty bunch with child kidnapping and a sort of vamparism involved, apparently in the search for eternal life.

Told in the past during the cults time and in the present where we spend time with a female detective with one of the most ridiculous names ever put to paper, the characters are wafer thin and cliched. The dialogue embarrassingly bad.
Speaking of ridiculous names, the book is riddled with them. I dont know if the author thought that it would be humorous or something but I found it totally distracting and very annoying.

There is nothing I really liked about this book. It reminded me of one of those badly made 1980s video nasties with bad acting/storytelling and dialogue with some nastiness thrown in for the sake of it.

Certainly up there with the worst books Ive read this year(and Ive read a couple of real stinkers) I honestly cant think of one positive thing to say about this.

Thanks to the publisher to publisher for the ARC through Netgalley.

I always enjoy cult themed crime novels and this one was no exception. I really enjoyed the three different perspectives, which really built tension, especially when they started to work in tandem with each other. Love’s perspective was the most interesting - it was fascinating to see how she was influenced by the cult psychology and how it lead to her actions in the present day. The cult activities and psychology behind it was truly horrific, and the escalation of the cult’s extreme actions was really disturbing - especially because it involved children.
For some reason, the end felt slightly anticlimactic, which was disappointing. Hence the four stars rather than five.
Thank you to Netgalley and the publishers for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

One of those books you can't put down!!!!! Different time lines and different POV 's make this a real page turner. Disturbing, chilling and fro gripping. A book about a community like no other I have read. What they were doing was both abhorrent and terrifying. I could not put this book down. Packed with tension and suspense. How far would a mother go to protect her babies?. A new author for me and this is her second book. I need to search out her first if it is anything like this one it will go straight to the top of my reading pile. Highly recommended.
Many thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the ARC in return for giving an honest review.

The Cult

In 1987, 6 year old Love and her family are living on a farm in the North of England. They are part of a religious commune led by a relative, Uncle Saviour. She used to be called Zoe but they have all been renamed in order to fit in with the commune’s ethos and also the destroy their previous identities. The commune is growing and attracting more families to its mix of ceremonies and living off the land. But, as we follow Love’s story over the years, the commune becomes a cult as Uncle Saviour declares that he has discovered the secret of eternal life. Things rapidly begin to change and take a very sinister turn….
Now, it’s the present day and 10 year old Hannah discovers that her younger brother, Greg is not in his bed. Instead, he’s preparing to leave home at 2am to meet a special friend who will take him to meet a fairy. She insists on going with him as she is not convinced that the letter has come from a special friend. However, on their way they witness a brutal killing and are chased into the local woods. Now they are missing and the trail is beginning to run cold….
DI Pearline Ottoline is assigned to the case and is determined to find them. She is haunted, and driven, by the memory of another local missing child, Isabelle, who has never been found.
Slowly, all of their paths begin to converge as the cult’s secrets are gradually revealed in chilling detail. Love, now grown up, and Brother Saviour’s favourite and most loyal supporter, will preserve it at all costs. She would even kill for it and Hannah and Greg are in great danger. Will Pearline or their mother, Lily, find them in time?
This was a gripping read which, towards the end, I just couldn’t put down. The author skilfully depicted how Love became institutionalised and was so loyal to the cult. She was one of the most dangerous characters as she watched her family be destroyed by the cult when their escape plan was thwarted. She knows that she was seen an ‘accident’ and the cult gave her self-worth. However, cult leaders aren’t born, they’re made and Love was moulded by her need to control. However, I didn’t feel that the leap from being a commune to a cult devoted to eternal life with such chilling and deadly effect was made clear enough.
But I also felt that there were too many subsidiary characters introduced as when Lily frantically tries to find Greg’s ‘special friend’ by visiting fellow pupils and there was also a sub plot involving her husband and a mutual friend which seemed to quickly peter out. At times it was confusing to keep track of them all especially with the cult members and I felt that it slowed down the action and some of them didn’t seem necessary. DI Pearline was an interesting character with her own demons and that seemed to be true of the other main characters.
When reading thrillers I always enjoy seeing how all the different plot lines begin to intertwine as they did in this book so successfully. Lily’s desperation was well portrayed as was the cult’s descent into horror. Cults have always fascinated me as I wonder how people get sucked into them but I feel sure that isolation plays a large part in it and also being able to attract people who are looking for a leader who will run their lives for them. However, there was one point where I thought that Love would finally see the cult for the sham it was but she didn’t and carried on believing. I also thought that Love was one of the most ironically named characters that I have ever met.
But, as the book raced towards an ending that I didn’t see coming I couldn’t turn the pages fast enough. A really good read.

My thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for an ARC.

This was a slow starter and seemed to drag a bit and then speeded up at the last minute. I did enjoy it and couldn’t wait to finish it and find out what happened. #The Cult by Abby Davies. #NetGalley

I was really looking forward to reading this after reading the blurb, and it was good to a certain extent, although there were bits that let the story down a little bit.

Told in two timelines 30 years earlier and present day. Thirty years ago Uncle Saviour set up a Cult, initially it was a farm he worked with his brother, his brothers wife and two children. But then Saviour had others living in the farm, he changed his brothers wife’s name from Joyce to Charity the children’s names were changed to Love and Peace. The brother didn’t like this he didn’t want his wife called Charity this led to a fight, and he left the wife and children stayed with Saviour. Love is completely in awe of saviour and as she grows up over the years she is determined to be the Queen Bee. For Charity and Peace they begin to see things they don’t like and try to leave but are stopped. The chapters alternate from Love’s point of view as the years pass, along with the viewpoint of DCI Ottoline and that of Lily mother of two missing children.

I found some of this story to be a little bit slow paced for me personally, I felt the Cult side of things dragged on a little and the characters didn’t stand out a great deal except for Love. However as the story moves along the tension gradually builds leading to a climactic ending that has your heart pounding, wondering who will survive and who won’t.

There were times that Lily the mother of the two missing children was annoying, I understand she was desperate to find her children but she was going to the same houses the police had already been too asking the same questions. The family weren’t given a family liaison officer so it meant Lily was just constantly charging off. Which in real life she wouldn’t be able to do.

Overall though this is a good premise there are plenty of red herrings thrown in to keep the reader guessing. A few surprises at the end.

I will certainly be looking out for whatever the author writes next.

Mother Loves Me was one of my top reads of 2021 so I just knew I had to get my hands on The Cult and it did not disappoint. I felt like the pacing was a little slower than her precious book but it worked really well. The way the chapters were laid out, switching between the different characters POVs, kept me engaged and with them being short as well, it made me struggle to put the book down and want to keep reading. I would 100% recommend this book to any thriller lover!

There’s something I find deeply fascinating about cults, so I was intrigued to read this book. As the plot progresses, the tension builds to add to the feeling of suspense. At times unsavoury, this was a good book that I was glad to have the opportunity to read.

Riveting, from the start to the end, plenty of red herrings and a satisfying finish. A thoroughly good read.***********************************************************************************************************************************************

I always love a good thriller about a cult, and this story did not let me down!

What an interesting and gripping read, highly recommend!

The Cult was for me an ok’ish thriller. I love any domestic noir with children at the heart of the drama and like many other reviewers I am fascinated by cults and so this novel seemed perfect for me. Sadly, that wasn’t the case. There were some brilliantly placed red herrings and the police’s desire to solve the case felt heartfelt and believable as did the scenes with Hannah and Greg but both Lily and Love were almost caricatures of themselves. For me none of the scenes at the cult felt genuine, it felt like satire at times, using every cult trope you can think of. Uncle Saviour is 2D at best and at times was flatter than a sheet of paper.
Lily was a slightly more believable character but why did she have to have added mental health problems?
The ending was straight out of a 1980’s cop drama and about as realistic and the epilogues….*shakes head*
And to echo all the other reviewers who said it what was up with all the ridiculous names???

I love a dodgy fictional cult, so the title and cover of this appealed to me right away. However, it took me quite a while to get into. The story covers two timelines - past and present - following Love, a child who grows up in the cult (the members are all given virtue-type names); Lily, the desperate present-day mother of two missing children; and Pearline, the police officer investigating their disappearance.

There's some really dark and unsavoury stuff going on here, with a central theme of the corruption of innocence and the thirst for power. It is interesting, if unpleasant, to see how this unfolds within the cult and how a charismatic personality (or two) can lead many people to accept the clearly unacceptable.

It did keep me reading, although credibility was pretty stretched at times and none of the characters - apart perhaps from Love - really came alive for me. DI Ottoline clearly has a backstory - and some UST with her handsome colleague - but I didn't really feel I got to know her particularly well, and we spend rather less time with her than with the other main characters.

What the heck's going on though with the outlandish names? The cult-bestowed ones are explicable, but Pearline Ottoline? Sky Lark? Harmonica?? On the other hand, I often got briefly confused between Lily and Love, purely because they were both short names beginning with L. (As a side note, Love mentions early on that her pre-cult name was Zoe, which "doesn't mean anything". Well, it does, Love, it means "life" - which is in fact highly appropriate in the circumstances!)

Overall an enjoyable read but with perhaps more lingering on the unsavoury aspects of the plot than I was entirely comfortable with, and I was left with - no pun intended - a bit of nasty taste in my mouth. I guess I prefer my dodgy fictional cults slightly less deranged than this turned out to be.

Many thanks to the publishers and NetGalley for the opportunity to read an advance copy in exchange for an honest review!

Not really my type of story.Well written but skipped to much from chapter to chapter.Took a while to get through.The end result was not the storyline I was expecting,just not my cup of tea.

This book!! I read it over 2 days and I just had to know how it ended! It goes into great detail about the workings of this particular Cult so it is a dark read and disturbing in parts so not one for the faint hearted.

The Cult is certainly a page turner, I liked how the book was told from different POVs and how there was different timelines. There is alot of characters in this book so when your reading it definitely give it your full attention so you don’t lose track.

I did like the detective aspect of this book and seeing everything unfold. Having watched documentaries about Cults over the years, I think this book shows the true horrors of what goes on in them.

Now that I’ve read The Cult I definitely want to get started on the author’s debut novel soon and of course I’ll let you know my thoughts on that aswell.

Thank you to Harper Collins UK and NetGalley for giving me the opportunity to review a advanced copy of this book.

This was a gripping thriller that I couldn’t put down.
Told from multiple points of view and over 2 timelines.
In the mid 80’s Uncle Saviour starts a commune. As the years pass, his ways of thinking and rules for his followers get more chilling as he searches for eternal life.
Fast forward to the present and 2 children go missing. DI Pearline Ottoline is put on the case to find them. She is haunted by the unsolved disappearance of a little girl from a few years ago and all 3 stories collide as the book reaches a chilling climax.
This was a solid 3.5 from me and will have you on the edge of your seat!
With thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for this arc in exchange for an honest review.