The Other Family

By: Theo Baxter

Many thanks to Zooloo’s Book Tours and Inkubator Books for the ARC of the book and the stop on the book tour!

About the Book

This is one family you don’t want to join.

Things haven’t been easy for fifteen-year-old Sam Cotton. She’s just recovering from the death of her mother when her father Jesse has a mental breakdown.

She’s taken out of his care and given to a foster family, the Bradfords. The Bradfords live in the middle of nowhere and seem like pious, God-fearing people.

But Sam soon notices some disturbing things. The forbidden rooms. The strict rules. The cameras that track her every move.

When Sam discovers that two girls previously fostered by the Bradfords have disappeared without trace, she realises she may be in grave danger.

Sam is smart and resourceful. And she’ll need to be – because the Bradfords have a dark secret. A secret which will thrust Sam into a terrifying nightmare from which she may never wake.

My Review

When I see a Theo Baxter book, I jump on the chance to read it. I’m so glad I jumped at the chance to read this one! This is one crazy, wild ride of a book. This book does come with some trigger warnings so please make sure to check them out prior to diving in.

The Other Family is filled with tense, heart stopping moments. The beginning was a little bit slow but that was necessary in order to set the stage and write the build up of the story. Sam was a great character. She was smart and sassy, I loved that she kept up her training that she learned from her dad. She kept her wits about her. I also loved the other girls in the house. They were each written really well. Revealing only what they had to for fear of their foster parents, warning Sam when they felt necessary.

While there were a few moments in the book that shocked me, there was one particular moment that I audibly gasped. I just didn’t expect that particular scene to play out like it did!

I will say this.. Baxter hit the nail on the head with the frustrations for some when it comes to the foster care system and the CPS system. I don’t know if he wrote this based off research or from experience, but this story could easily have been true, at least to an extent. I think that’s what makes this book SO good. It’s so real, and so horrific.

It’s out now, so pick it up!

About the Author

Caleb Crowe is a British writer of psychological thrillers, and is fascinated by stories where extraordinary things happen to ordinary people, and the mundane is transformed into the menacing.

He’s afraid of the sea, fearful in the countryside, panicky in large open spaces and terrified of small, confined spaces. He finds eerily quiet villages and bustling impersonal cities equally unsettling. There’s nowhere, and no one, that doesn’t possess some kind of dark, brooding anxiety just waiting to have the lid prised open and turned into a twisty, suspenseful, nerve-shredding story.

He lives in Manchester with his partner, two children and two cats, who probably have their own mysterious agendas. Whether he’s navigating the urban jungle or wrestling with the daily challenges of family life, Caleb draws inspiration from the unpredictability of everyday existence.