What She Saw by Wendy Clarke

☆☆☆☆
Kindle Edition, 329 pages
Expected publication: May 1st 2019 by Bookouture
About the Book:
She lied to her daughter to save her family. Everyone knows Leona would do anything for her daughter Beth: she moved to Church Langdon to send Beth to the best school, worked hard to build a successful business to support them and found them the perfect little cottage to call home. Leona and Beth hike together, shop together, share their hopes and fears with one another. People say they’re more like best friends than mother and daughter. It’s the relationship every mother dreams of. But their closeness means that Beth struggles to make friends. Her mother has kept her sheltered from the world. She’s more reliant on her mother’s love. More vulnerable. When Beth finds an envelope hidden under the floorboards of their home, the contents make her heart stop. Everything she thought she knew about her mother is a lie. And she realizes there is no one she can turn to for help. What if you’ve been protected from strangers your whole life, but the one person you can’t trust is the person closest to home?

What is seen can never be unseen.

As with any thriller, there are secrets to be uncovered, but what differs here is Wendy Clarke's delicate unfurling of these hidden treasures and the easy to follow writing. I experienced feelings of panic, grief, and shock right alongside Beth. Told from three different points of view, there were times where, as the reader, I questioned the reliability of the narrators and was as anxious to learn as much about them as possible.

This is a fast paced, edge of your seat, well written piece of fiction that captures you from the first page and keeps you engaged until the very last. Even though some of the twists were obvious I still wanted to continue reading, to find out more. I had to know if what I thought was correct, and where the rest of the story would lead me.

I appreciated that while the story includes a teenage character, I didn't get annoyed with her dialogue, which I commonly struggle with. Only Daughter portrayed characters authentically, from the bewildered parents, to the shocked spouse and child...and even those more sinister characters. This book was really something. I loved the characters, the plot and the pace. Wendy Clarke brings readers a highly engaging, intoxicating novel which is exceptionally well written. The last few chapters were so intense I was holding my breath and gritting my teeth.

Thank you NetGalley, Bookouture and Wendy Clarke for the opportunity to read this book in exchange for an impartial review; all opinions are my own.

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