Tess StimsonRezensionen

3.5 stars, rounding up. If you are looking for a book that has more twists than a korker ribbon, this could be a great read for you!

Story:

Alex is a career-oriented lawyer who isn’t really fond of motherhood but loves her three year old to whatever extent she can. Her daughter Lottie is a precocious spoilt brat, with her every word and action revealing her stubbornness and wilfulness. But the mother and daughter still have a trusting connect with each other. So when Lottie disappears from a beach during a fancy wedding, Alex fears the worst and uses every resource she can to discover what happened to her child. Will she be able to find Lottie before it’s too late? Will the media attention on the high-profile case help or make matters worse?

This was my first Tess Stimson book, and it left me with mixed feelings, though my final feelings are a bit skewed towards the positive side. The prologue provides a nice setting for the story, but it also leaks a tiny, albeit misleading, spoiler. The writing style is very quick especially in the first half, but soon it begins to get a little repetitive. There are twists galore, but some of them are quite farfetched. The book provides an equal number of “What???” and “What rubbish!” moments. I don’t want to go too much into spoilers but the rationale provided for some characters who did what they did was just tough to digest. The ending was especially over the top. I prefer thrillers where the twists aren’t easily guessable but still flow logically from the story, thereby giving you the satisfaction of making deductions and enjoying the process of the reveal. I didn’t enjoy the big turnaround twist in this book because it was impossible to guess.

The book covers some themes really well. How white privilege works when it comes to case investigations, how mothers face more flak than fathers, how career-oriented mothers are always asked to get their priorities right… These were all nicely incorporated within the storyline. But not everything is hunky-dory with the plot development. There are some obvious misses by the police investigating the kidnapping and these are quite glaring loopholes. How come experienced police officers miss out on such clear logical gaps that amateurs can detect easily? All is fair in love, war and contemporary thrillers, I guess.

The author’s choice of lead character was intriguing. Alex isn’t the perfect mother nor person. She loves to take personal time away from her daughter. Her career comes first. She’s not very likeable or down-to-earth. As such, she makes for a great protagonist in a thriller because you get mixed feelings about her at once: sympathy at her loss plus irritation at her behaviour. Lottie is interesting too, for whatever pages she appears in. I’ve never seen a three year old depicted in this devious way, and that is a very brave decision by the author. Most of the rest of the characters hardly make any impact as they come and go in the story on an if-need-be basis. The sole exception is Quinn, a journalist who is covering the Lottie kidnapping to get her career back on track. As is the common trope in most thrillers nowadays, there is at least one main character who is a drunken mess for at least a few pages, and in this book, that honour belongs to Quinn and as such, I didn’t like her character.


The audiobook description showed an ensemble cast, and this misled me into thinking that the book has multiple key characters. But the book comes only in two perspectives (Alex - 1st person and Quinn - 3rd person) and both of these are voiced by the same narrator. (I’m guessing this is Stephanie Racine.) The rest of the voice cast comes only on minor occasions to voice the public opinion on the kidnapping. This was a slight disappointment. Of course, I can’t take away anything from the main narrator’s performance. She was outstanding to listen to in this 11 hour audiobook as she voices Alex and Quinn perfectly, albeit similarly. But when you expect a multi-cast production and find only one main narrator, it’s like a let-down.

AUDIOBOOK SPOILER AHEAD: I didn’t understand the purpose of the scene by scene replay of the two kidnappings. Was it to show that Alex used the same modus operandi as Lottie’s kidnapper? Or were those chapters from Flora’s kidnapping and scattered in the narrative earlier just to provide a misdirection? This didn’t come out clearly in the audiobook.

My rating was at a steady 4.5 until about halfway in the book, and then it kept going up and down depending on the twist. The ending is what brought my rating down to 3.5 and kept it there.

You will like the book if you like twists that simply can’t be predicted. Overall, this is still one of the better thrillers I’ve read this year and it will be an entertaining read if you don’t question it too much.

Thank you, NetGalley and HarperCollins UK Audio, for the audio ARC of the book in exchange for an honest review.


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Stolen by Tess Stimson
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

#FirstLine ~ The hot sand at the side of the road burns her bare feet.

This book was so good. I have to admit I thought I had it figured out, but I was very wrong. There were twists and turns that really threw me off and it was so exciting. I loved that there was a perfect pace to this outstanding story and that the ending was like BAM!! A must read for thriller lovers!!!

This novel opens with the murder and two women are with the dead man. So, we know what happened, but not why or who is responsible. The rest of the novel provides the details through various voices, starting six weeks earlier.
No one is likable in this novel, and the husband, Andrew, is a creep and totally weak. I had a suspicion early on as to the murderer. When it was revealed, I was correct, but there were many red herrings, with too much obsessive behavior and strange events occurring in the novel.

This story has an explosive beginning and a surprise ending. If you plan to read this book be prepared to ignore everything else as you'll have trouble putting it down.

Alexa Martini faces the worst nightmare of any parent. Her 3 year old daughter Charlotte is abducted during a wedding celebration in St Petersburg Florida. As you read about Alexa and Lottie you'll find it's hard to like the little girl. She is so hard to handle, disobedient and quarrelsome. Alexa is a human rights attorney in London and has flown to Florida for her best friend Mark's wedding. Her Italian husband was killed in a bridge collapse years earlier and she is now the sole caregiver of their daughter Lottie.

The world is watching as news stations report on the abduction and put Alexa in an unflattering light. Is she a good mother? Public opinion is strong about "what they would have done" but that's to be expected in this day and age. Alexa has her supporters but she also has those who vilify her character and actions through social media and news outlets.

Days turn to years as Alexa never stops looking for her daughter. False leads and troubling revelations about family will sway your opinion regarding the kidnapper. Was I surprised? Absolutely!

This is my first book by this author and I will most certainly be looking for more of her work. Great suspense, emotionally moving and fast paced.

Publication date is August 5, 2021 by Avon Books UK. Genre: Mystery, Thrillers and Women's Fiction.

Thank you to Netgalley for the advanced reader's copy of this book. I was not compensated for the review, all opinions are mine.

I am in the minority here about this book. We start off with a tense scene, two women in a hotel room with a dead man between them. One woman is injured and covered in blood. Which one killed the man on the floor?

After that I was confused as there were so many characters introduced at once. I was having trouble keeping them straight such as which one was Andrew's daughter or who was related to the other characters.

Louise is the ex-wife of Andrew Page and Caz is the current wife. There are tensions between the two even as they try and play nicely with the relationships. The interviews at the police station reveal more about each woman's personality and you start to get a picture of their lives and how Andrew played them both. I developed some empathy for characters I previously disliked as the story continued.

I would try another book by this author but I wasn't over the moon in love with this one. Again, I am i the minority after seeing reviews.

Thanks to NetGalley for the complimentary copy of this book. This book was published by Avon books UK on July 9, 2020.

Better writing than I expected. Could be triggery for some. Not a great reflection of non-monogamy other than swinging - to me. Good characterisation though.

Kate's life is far from easy. She earns a lot more than her husband Ned, and works long hours... but her boss seems to be trying to edge her out. She pays for their mortgage, and her mother's too, and school fees for their teenage children Guy and Agness.

Kate also runs the home single-handedly, with little support from Ned. Guy is being bullied at school, and is uncommunicative. Agness is going through an angry hormonal stage, fighting for more freedom... and Kate's mother has a string of constant demands.

Finally - actually in the first chapter - in a surprisingly low-key way, Kate comes to the end of her tether. She gets in a taxi to return to her office... and goes, instead, to the airport.

This novel is told in the present tense, which works well. It's also told from multiple viewpoints, which becomes necessary when Kate takes off. And it makes an interesting read: would Kate ever return to her demanding family? Why has she let them get away with it for so long? How would her family get along without her....?

Unfortunately, Guy's accounts are peppered with bad language, and Ned's, at the beginning, are even worse. I was most unimpressed with his first chapter, which describes in crass and juvenile detail what he does, in about five minutes, to Kate in the bedroom. Still, the main part of the story reads well, and it's quite a page-turner towards the end. However the ending is rather too neat, with some inconsistencies that simply didn't work.

All right as a light read, if you don't object to 18-rated language in places, but nothing special.

A real can't put it down book: I have read and re read this book many times. Its a real, I can't put it down type of book.

I laughed, I cried and was throughly entertained.

Fab.

The Cradle Snatcher is about Clare and how her life changes after she gives birth to twins.

We see the story from several different points of view (Clare, the nanny, Clare’s husband, etc), which would be interesting if it wasn’t so repetitive. I hated seeing the same event from three different points of view.

There are some fun characters in this book, I especially liked Clare’s mum and brother who both made me laugh whenever they were around.

Overall it was a typical chick-lit book, a bit funny but a bit clichéd too. As usual with this sort of book I got really annoyed with the ending. A good relaxing read if you like chick-lit, but really nothing special.

Initially i have my doubt whether i would be able to enjoy reading this book after reading the plot but given the good review by other readers, i decided to give it a try and i am so glad i did so. The author have written brilliantly about the book. Given the title of the book and the synopsis, one would automatically think that the selfishness that Kate have in leaving her family behind but reading thru the book, one would understand why Kate did it.

Kate is a strong character in the book, being shouldered the burden of a family who rely on her and with the breakdown rooming over her, she decided to walk out of her family and search again for herself. This scenario i believe happened everywhere and to have that courage, not many will do such as Kate did. I like the way the author written the book; each of the characters; Kate, Ned, Eleanor, Agness and Guy have their say and thoughts in different chapters which provided a two way insight as to what really happened and their feeling towards each others. It is fascinating to see such a different perspective emerged from two different thoughts on the same thing and it tells us the damage miscommunication is if problems is to be leave as it is without being dealt with.

Overall, this book is well written, with good plot and characters. I enjoyed reading this book ;)

Lack of originality: At page 122, I put this book down and refused to finish it. In the first 122 pages, Tess Stimson incorporated three stories/jokes/urban legends that have been circulating the internet for years into her own story. Is this author capable of an original thought? I am very disappointed.

This is a chick lit/thriller novel about a woman in London who finds herself overwhelmed by motherhood, hires a nanny, struggles with her marriage and meets an intriguing American who speaks the Victorian language of flowers. There are plot twists galore, but this is such soapy fun you won't really mind.

This book was not what I was expecting. I picked this up thinking it was going to be a nice quick read about a workaholic woman with twin babies whose newly hired nanny was sleeping with the husband. Instead, there was so much more drama.

Usually I like the alternating viewpoints in books. I like when chapters jump back and forth between characters, you get a better feel for them. It is much easier to connect with them that way. But with this book, when a new character is narrating a chapter, the author goes back through dialogue from the previous chapter and you basically read the whole scene again (dialogue written out, again) just to get two or three sentences of how the new character is reacting to the situation. It really started to drive me crazy, especially since not all characters were given the same amount of time. They would just have one random chapter that they had to sum up their whole situation in.

Also what really bothered me was the drama. Nobody seemed to have the decency to just spit out whatever they were thinking. Nobody said what they really felt or wanted, they just bickered back and forth until it blew up in their faces. And this was especially frustrating when you had to go from chapter to chapter rehashing everything over and over again in different points of view.

Lastly, there was just way too much going on:
A workaholic mom
a nanny who is dating a drunk who beats her because he was raped crossing a park at night
the grandmother is a stuck up bitch
the brother has ALS but doesn't tell anyone and lets them all think he is a drunk who now the nanny has the hots for
the husband is stealing money from his rich wife's account because he lost a million plus in a bad stock deal
the husband kidnaps one of the babies and takes him to Lebanon but is conveniently tracked down by the customer who has randomly fallen in love with the wife and happens to have connections in all the right places
one of the babies has a rare salt diabetes disorder which is then believed to have been a poisoning by the mother until once again that love struck customer calls one of his convenient contacts who just happens to be a specialist at the hospital the baby was taken to

and much more. Then to top it all off, the wife still decides she wants to work it out with the money stealing, baby kidnapping husband even though now she is love struck with that customer. I don't know, maybe I'm just having an off day or whatever, but that is just way too much drama to be taken seriously. I can't say I hated the book because it was interesting at times to see what was going to happen and it was a quick read. It held my interest. I just don't think I will be rushing out any time soon to get this author's other books.

The book is first published in the UK as Infidelity Unchained, and the interconnected affairs definitely read like a emotional chain reaction. Every character is very distinct and not perfect, when we read about the same event from different points of view, we understand why one person's driven to act the way he or she does. My favorite character is Beth, she's bi-polar and has been under emotional lockdown for years, yet she was able to pull through for her daughter when needed.

This book started off well for me but it got too predictable and I ended up losing focus in the middle.

With it’s pinky-purple cover, covered in flowers, The Cradle Snatcher gives the impression of being a rather light-hearted read, but that’s not what you find once you start reading. Clare is a middle class woman who discovers that life doesn’t always go smoothly.. once her twins are born, she tries to deal with the combination of work, marriage and motherhood, and finds it all slipping away from her.

The characters in this book are complex and changeable, and not always likeable. The story is told from varying viewpoints as it progresses, which gives some interesting insights.

There are many different issues explored, and I did wonder if a few could have been left out, but the author does manage to bring everything together at the end. Some of the characters may be a little too harsh for some readers, whilst others will enjoy the realism. In fact, that can be said of the book as a whole.. this is probably not a book for those who enjoy light hearted women’s fiction, but others will appreciate the honest, realistic feel. It’s one to make your own mind up about!

This was my first book club book. I found the story to be very easy to read, but the characters were lacking. I was fascinated by the situation and very vivid imagery the author used, but I found it hard to imagine people with such limited thoughts and adult reasoning.

Non so che dire, a parte un po' pesante verso tre quarti di racconto, è un libro divertente, costruito sui 3 punti di vista dei protagonisti che alternano così la scrittura e lo svolgersi del romanzo. Intrecci amorosi, matrimonio, amore e sesso, tutt'e quattro le cose abbastanza ben esplicitate, l'ultima in particolare. Romanzo di una notte e un giorno. Bene.

My only niggle is that sometimes the same incident is reviewed too many times. If something happens to one character, in the next chapter another character is telling it from their perspective. This concept doesn't bother me but the amount of it does. That's what prevents this from getting a 5/5. I do find sometimes reading chapters from characters difficult (aka Jodi Picoult) but it was fine in this case, and necessary.

The plot is excellent and I really felt like I got to know the characters. I haven't read 'The Adultery Club' yet and I hope I am not disappointed reading them out of synch with their writing order. Stimson can clearly write, otherwise TAC wouldn't have been a bestseller. This book is a good length and will provoke some emotions along the way depending on which character(s) you find affinty with.

An enjoyable afternoon spent reading this on the train.

Superior chick lit. The characters are original - I wonder what's happening to them now. The switch between the three principals gives you insight into their choices; even if they're doing something awful, you can't dismiss them out of hand.

I registered a book at BookCrossing.com!
http://www.BookCrossing.com/journal/12840281

I registered a book at BookCrossing.com!
http://www.BookCrossing.com/journal/12930669