The Phantom Child

By: A.J. Wills

Many thanks to Zooloo’s Book Tours and the author for the gifted copy of this book and the stop on the book tour!

ABOUT THE BOOK

With cracks beginning to show in her marriage, Karina thinks a short break to a luxury villa in Turkey with her husband, Ronan, and their four-year-old son, Jacob, is just what the family needs.

It’ll be a chance to relax, enjoy some good food, and more importantly to reconnect with the people she loves the most.

But on their first morning, Karina is startled to discover she’s slept in late and not been woken by Jacob.

He’s an early riser who always comes into their bed pestering them to make him breakfast.

So where is he? A needle of fear spikes through Karina’s veins.

She rushes to his room, but his bed is empty and he’s nowhere to be found in the villa.

But when she wakes Ronan, frantic with worry, and tells him their son is missing, he stares at her blankly.

He says he has no idea what she’s talking about and that they don’t have any children.

He’s certainly never heard of a boy called Jacob…

MY REVIEW

This book was very different than what I’ve read recently. Wills writes with such a way that it had me believing every word that he was writing, no matter if it was true or not. That’s another thing about this book – you never know who to trust! This book was filled with unlikeable characters!

I will say, I did have to suspend my belief a bit for this book as a mother, but I didn’t mind suspending it for the sake of the story. There were times wherein I wanted to scream at Karina, go through the book, and shake her.

I was shocked at the twist, the way that it played out and the reasoning why. It was very creative and something I would never have imagined.

The ending wasn’t my favorite, and that’s because it was kind of open. Not sure if there is a second book in the works, but I think there could be.

If you’d like to check this book out, you can do so here.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

AJ Wills writes standalone psychological thrillers with twisty plots.

He’s a former journalist who wrote in his spare time, before and after work for ten years, until he was finally able to fulfil his lifelong dream of becoming a fulltime author in May 2021.

He’s never looked back and now runs a small independent publishing company, Cherry Tree Publishing with his wife, AJ McDine, also a thriller writer.

He said: “I’ve always loved thrillers, but psychological thrillers hold a special interest for me because they’re about the scary, insane, disturbing things that happen to ordinary people – and we can all relate to them on some level.”

He lives in Kent in the south east of England.

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