The Push by Claire McGowan

☆☆☆☆
.PDF, 295 pages
Expected publication: November 12th 2020 by Amazon Publishing UK

About the Book:
The party should have been perfect: six couples from the same baby group, six newborns, a luxurious house. But not everything has gone to plan, and while some are here to celebrate, others have sorrows to drown. When someone falls from the balcony of the house, the secrets and conflicts within the group begin to spill out … DS Alison Hegarty, herself struggling with infertility, is called in to investigate. She’s convinced the fall was not an accident, and finds the new parents have a lot to hide. Wealthy Ed and Monica show off their newborn while their teenage daughter is kept under virtual house arrest. Hazel and Cathy conceived their longed-for baby via an anonymous sperm donor—or so Hazel thinks. Anita and Jeremy planned to adopt from America, but there’s no sign of the child. Kelly, whose violent boyfriend disrupted previous group sessions, came to the party even though she lost her baby. And then there’s Jax, who’s been experiencing strange incidents for months—almost like someone’s out to get her. Is it just a difficult pregnancy? Or could it be payback for something she did in the past? It’s a nightmare of a case, and as events get even darker it begins to look impossible. Only one thing is clear: they all have something to hide. And for one of them, it’s murder.

My Review:

I loved What You Did and The Other Wife by the same author very much and was SO happy when NetGalley approved me for this one. The Push is a wonderful whodunit with an Agatha Christie feel to it and a bit of police procedural thrown in for good measure. This is an enjoyable, tense physiological drama. It's not original but it's well written. 

Visitors arrive at a BBQ and someone ends up dead after being "pushed/falling" from a deck...and every single one of the guests are implicated. The best part!? You don't even know who the victim is until half way through the book.

It's fun and I like the way the tension escalates. Ms. McGowan writes well. She vividly describes her settings and characters and her prose is easy to read. I could empathize with all the new mom's, even if I didn't like them very much, and I loved the surprises the author had in store for us readers. The Push isn't a thriller in the usual sense but is for those readers who are looking for a book that deals with what lies beneath.

Disclosure:
Thank you NetGalley, Claire McGowan and Amazon Publishing UK for the opportunity to read this book in exchange for an impartial review; all opinions are my own.

#ThePush #NetGalley