Not war and disease and burnt-out hotels, but men and women in their boxes with their babies and their coffee-makers and their holidays, this is what real life should look like. It is also a fascinating examination of how memories are formed, of how reliable they may be after years have passed, and of how individuals remember events very differently, and how using different coping mechanisms for survival have affected them.

The heroine could use a bit of common sense occasionally but otherwise good character development for all the players.She was the only one aware of what was happening to her older sister and her one trip to the library to read a book on the topic made her the voice of authority spouting disjointed facts throughout the book.

Pic is produced by Bill Kenwright ( Broken), and executive produced by David Gilbery ( The Lost Daughter) and Naomi George ( My Pure Land) for London-based BKStudios.Bill Kenwright Films recently produced My Pure Land which premiered as part of this year’s EIFF official selection, and drama short The Hope Rooms(starring Ciarán Hinds and Andrew Scott) winner of Grand Prix Future Filmmaker Award, Flickers Rhode Island Film Festival 2016, and Another Mother’s Son (starring Jenny Seagrove, John Hannah, Amanda Abbington, Ronan Keating) about the Nazi occupation of Jersey in the Channel Islands during WW2. She was chosen as one of the Observer 's 'New Faces of Fiction 2017' for her first thriller, the bestselling My Sister's Bones . A horrific incident in war-torn Iraq and the death of her mother (Steed) have brought a haunted Rafter home to Herne Bay, a place she believed she had escaped forever. But for the last 30% of this novel I was clinging to the edges of my kindle, my shoulders aching with tension and excitement as I literally could not read fast enough. Even as a reader I did doubt Kate at times because of her hallucinations, where she frequently sees and even talks with Nidal- the young boy who died on her previous assignment.

The main narrator, Kate Rafter – whose very name suggests someone desperately struggling through lethally dangerous waters – is another unreliable narrator – in my view, the best kind, as they are usually much more fun.The key player in this novel, finds herself in a police station being interviewed by a police psychologist. This book covers so many great universal themes: how alcoholism destroys families and life of children in such families, what does journalist feels during and after trips to war torn countries, how it affects their personal life seeing so many ruined lives and death of innocent people, how people react while suffering domestic violence. I love when Author gives voices to more than one character, I really enjoyed reading the story from different point of view and it made the book and the characters way more interesting and indulging. The experience of walking through mounds of mutilated bodies had affected me greatly and I remember thinking how lucky we were in the West, how chance dictated that some children were born into peace while others were born into conflict. As well as Kate’s backstory as a war reporter, we also learn of the trauma that she and her sister faced in their childhood.