Title:- The Stepchild
Author:- Nicole Trope
No. of pages:- 276 pages
Date published:- will be published on 15th March 2022
Publisher:- Bookouture
Genre:- Psychological Thriller
Rating:-
Three-year-old Millie Everleigh disappears on a crisp winter’s day, and nothing is as it seems…
It’s the phone call every mother dreads.
I’m climbing into the car after a trip to the grocery store. As the engine starts, my phone rings. It’s my stepdaughter, Shelby, who is babysitting my three-year-old little girl Millie.
‘I only went upstairs for a second,’ she says through her sobs. ‘She’s gone.’
I race home to find my blue-eyed baby girl missing, and my heart ripped out of my chest.
When the police turn up, Shelby’s story starts to unravel. What is she hiding?
Then I get a message saying, ‘Your husband is not who you think he is.’ Could he be lying?
Suddenly, my family feel like strangers. Everyone has a secret – even me.
No one knows why I was late coming back from the store, and the guilt I’ve been feeling ever since…
Once the truth comes out, all of our lies exposed, will it be too late to save my precious child?
Another one of those fast paced thrillers that will put you at the edge of the seat, by Nicole Trope!
Shelby is twelve years old and is asked to babysit her three-year-old half-sister Millie. But while babysitting, Millie goes missing.
The story is told from the perspectives of Leslie (Millie’s mother and Shelby’s stepmother), Shelby and a woman named Ruth, who seemed to be obsessed with Millie’s disappearance. From the start of the chapter, when Millie goes missing to the end, the story is fast paced, packed with twists and turns that you wouldn’t even expect! The story started getting more tense in the middle of the story and boy, the ending was completely unexpected. Kudos to the author for keeping the reader at the edge of the seat while reading this thriller! I stayed up all night reading the book, wondering what is going to happen–will Millie be ever found? Did someone kill her? What really happened to her? And finally all those questions were answered at the end!
Overall, if you like reading fast paced thrillers that will keep you up all night, an uputdownable thriller that will keep you at the edge of the seat, then this book is one for you–worth five stars!
Many thanks to Netgalley and Bookouture for the ARC. The review is based on my honest opinion only.
Nicole Trope went to university to study Law but realised the error of her ways when she did very badly on her first law essay because-as her professor pointed out- ‘It’s not meant to be a story.’ She studied teaching instead and used her holidays to work on her writing career and complete a Masters’ degree in Children’s Literature.
The idea for her first published novel, The Boy under the Table, was so scary that it took a year for her to find the courage to write the emotional story. She went on to publish a further five novels in Australia before joining Bookouture in 2019. She is a USA Today and Amazon bestseller in the USA, UK, AUS and CAN.
She lives in Sydney with her husband and three children
Tropical Girl Reads 