Today I’m joining the blog tour for The Other Boy. My review is written with thanks to Zoe O’Farrell for inviting me on the tour and to the publisher for my copy of the book.

Blurb:

When the worst comes calling…

Scott and Blair Bagby are a happy, successful English couple living in the suburbs with their teenage son and Great Dane. Life seems good, until one beautiful spring morning when a detective inspector knocks on their door asking if their son is home, unleashing an unspeakable horror that blows apart the life they thought they had.

Police have discovered bodies buried deep in the Peasedale forest and the inspector suspects one is Jamie, the final victim of a brutal and prolific serial killer. But Jamie’s death is unlike all the others, starting with his emergency phone call that leads to a macabre burial ground near a dilapidated hunting shack and creates shocking suspicions.

With bone deep grief threatening to destroy their marriage and their sanity, Scott and Blair set out to investigate Jamie’s death, a journey that not only upends their perceptions of who they are, but torturously reveals they may not have known Jamie at all…

Review:

I was drawn to The Other Boy because it sounded different to a lot of the other crime novels I’ve read, and I really enjoyed reading a novel that approached the crime from the perspective of the parents of one of the victims. I found the novel engaging and intriguing. I had a lot of questions and I wanted to know the answers to them.

The story is narrated by Scott and Blair, the grieving parents of a recent murder victim. They both grieve and different ways and the alternating narration highlights this and allows the reader to build a broader picture of what has happened, although their tendency to see the best in their son sometimes calls into question their reliability. This adds to the fascination of the story and I was compelled to keep reading. Scott and Blair’s story is obviously an emotional one, and Heidi Field conveys their struggle with grief clearly and compassionately, in a way that made me sympathise with them, despite their flaws.

The ending of The Other Boy is full of tension. I loved the description of the woods that made me feel really claustrophobic, as if I was right there in the woods myself. I was taken by surprise a few times as the story reached its conclusion.

I look forward to reading more by this author!

The Other Boy is available from Amazon.

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