“The Child” Book Review

The Child written by Fiona Barton keeps the readers’ attention throughout the entire book. There is not a moment or sentence that the audience wonders, “hm, that probably won’t matter at the end of the story”. While some books can be difficult or confusing to get through, The Child is both a challenging read and an interesting one. Every line Barton includes in the book is important to the plot and pivotal in understanding the conclusion. Another book that was written by Barton, The Widow is similar to The Child. Both are written in a very similar fashion. The book, The Child, revolves around a cold case of a dead child found at a building site in London. One of the protagonists, Kate Waters, is trying to impress her boss and comes across this cold case. Kate was written into both The Child and The Widow. Kate and her boss, Terry, both think that this may be a big case. The book is written from views of different perspectives which is extremely interesting to read. There is the perspective of Kate, a grieving mother, Angela, and a young wife, Emma. The wounds of the women are not always visible to other people but understood by the audience. The characters are very well described throughout the book and are uncommonly believable. Throughout the 86 chapters, the audience is never bored and thoughts, opinions, and information are shared on every page. The audience finds out that without Kate pushing the case in the right direction, the case may never have been solved scientifically. The story is clever and witty as Barton writes about an unsolved case of a baby skeleton. The book is filled with secrets and truths most of which the audience will understand at the end of the book. There are some predictable moments however, there are some startling and surprising turns and the character-driven investigations are interesting to read.