#Blogtour: The Secret Mother by Shalini Boland @ShaliniBoland @bookouture

I’m very excited to bring you my review of The Secret Mother by Shalini Boland.  Thank you to Kim Nash and Bookouture for my copy of this book and for inviting me onto the blog tour.  Special thanks to Kim for understanding when i was unable to post yesterday on my scheduled day due to internet issues.

The Secret Mother is available to buy now in ebook and paperback now in the UK & the US.

Book Blurb:

Are you my mummy?’

Tessa Markham returns home to find a child in her kitchen. He thinks she’s his mother. But Tessa doesn’t have any children.

Not anymore.

She doesn’t know who the little boy is or how he got there.

After contacting the police, Tessa is suspected of taking the mystery child. Her whole life is turned upside down. And then her husband reveals a secret of his own…

Tessa isn’t sure what to believe or who to trust. Because someone is lying. To find out who, she must confront her painful past. But is the truth more dangerous than Tessa realises?

An absolutely unputdownable psychological thriller with a twist that will make you wonder if you can ever trust anyone again. If you loved Gone Girl, The Girl on the Train and The Sister this book will have you hooked.

My Review:

Before reading The Secret Mother i felt in a bit of a reading slump.  I just couldn’t motivate myself to do much reading.  Whether this was because of moving and a lot of other things happening I could’t say but The Secret Mother helped me break this slump as I couldn’t stop reading it.  I have to be honest, it wasn’t one that grabbed me right from the start but the more I read the more intrigued I became as more and more odd things came to light.  I soon found that I was racing through the pages eager to find out more and discover the secrets behind the little boys sudden appearance in Tessa’s kitchen.

The author does a brilliant job in slowly increasing the tension int he book, which was so intense at times I had to skip ahead to find out what was going to happen.  This made it hard to put down and I often found myself trying to sneak a few more pages in.

I felt a lot of empathy towards Tessa and her predicament.  Regular readers of my blog and my blogger friends will know that I also lost a child and therefore understood exactly how Tessa was feeling.  The author does a great job in describing the emotions and behaviour of a recently bereaved mother, so much so that I think I would recommend this book to others just so they could understand more about how it feels to lose a child.  I felt that she was very misunderstood and that no-one in her life, at the start of the book anyway, listened to her and let her get her point of view across.  I did find myself almost screaming at the book because of some of the things she does trying to discover the truth.  She seems quite a together lady sometimes but when it comes to discovering more about the child she doesn’t always think straight.  I think this is quite true to life as I remember being quite capable in some areas but going to pieces over very small things.

I’m not sure if it is pregnancy hormones but I seem to be reading about a lot of characters I’d happily hit at the moment.  Ellie and Scott are another two that are so well describe that they made my blood boil.  I hate people who act like that and couldn’t believe they weren’t more sympathetic towards her.  They were also very real characters as I have, unfortunately, met similar people in real life.

The ending was brilliant and very unexpected.  I had a lot of theories in my head about what would happen and how it would end but none of them proved correct.  I love it when this happens and an author is able to keep me guessing until the end.  I also liked that the author included a chapter on what everyone’s life was like a few months down the line as it was very interesting to see how it all turned out for each of the characters.

This is the first book by Shalini Boland that I have read but it definitely won’t be my last and I will look forward to reading more from her in the future.  If you like perfectly plotted thrillers that make you think then you will love this book.

Thank you to Kim Nash and Bookouture for giving me a copy of this book and for inviting me on the blog tour.

About The Author:

Shalini Boland lives in Dorset, England with her husband, two children and their cheeky terrier cross. Before kids, she was signed to Universal Music Publishing as a singer/songwriter, but now she spends her days writing psychological thrillers (in between school runs and hanging out endless baskets of laundry).

Shalini’s debut psychological thriller THE GIRL FROM THE SEA reached No 1 in the US Audible charts and No 7 in the UK Kindle charts. Her second thriller THE BEST FRIEND reached no 2 in the US Audible charts and No 10 in the Amazon UK Kindle charts. It also achieved number 1 in all its categories and was a Kindle All Star title for several months in a row. Shalini’s recent release THE MILLIONAIRE’S WIFE reached No 9 in the Kindle UK charts.

Be the first to hear about her new releases here: http://eepurl.com/b4vb45

Shalini is also the author of two bestselling Young Adult series as well as an atmospheric WWII novel with a time-travel twist.

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