Next of Kin: the brand new gripping and shocking legal crime thriller that you won’t want to miss in 2022!

OMG! what an amazing book.sucked in to believing so many different things and then to have so many twists and turns. I thoroughly enjoyed every second of reading it.

Ugh. I was all set to give this a full five star rating. And yet by the last page, I’m at a two star rating. What is it with authors and the stupid, ‘sensational’ twists? This was a stunning book for the vast majority, delving into the tragic consequences of a forgotten baby in a hot car. It’s a rare but well known phenomenon and claims the lives of 38 children a year on average in the USA. It’s even more rare in the UK as our weather is more changeable, and we have far fewer really hot days. But it happens. And if this novel had just stuck to the damn brief, it would have been powerful and thought provoking. Instead I’m just annoyed.I really, really hate it when authors take a solid premise and stick in a wildly unlikely twist to jazz up the conclusion. And that’s what happened here. Strangely enough, I had my suspicions fairly early on that all wasn’t as it seemed. There were elements that didn’t quite sit right. But I ignored my suspicions and figured it was just the author’s style. Well, it was the author’s style, I guess. Just the style in question is ludicrous twists.Maybe two stars is harsh, but I’m rarely quite so peeved on finishing a novel. And I think it’s the wasted damn potential that gets me. You’ve taken a serious, tragic and catastrophic series of events - forgotten baby syndrome - and deliberately made it tawdry, tacky and sordid. With 33 families in 2022 left shell shocked and grieving because that one moment of inattention leading to the death of their child, Abdullah has taken their story and made it less. In the face how much judgement and anguish is experienced, the guilt and shame of forgetting your own child and causing their death, it doesn’t seem like too much to ask for the topic to be dealt with sensitively. And for 80% of this, that would seem to be the case. But it’s thrown away and discarded in the final chapters. Left to the side for the sake of the sensationalist twist.So yeah, maybe the two stars is harsh. But I can’t justify going any higher considering my gut wrenching disgust at how this was handled by the end. It would have been better finishing abruptly at the 80% mark instead of this … charade of tragedy.

This is the second book I have read by the author. It is very good read with a stunning story with 2 exceptions. In part 2 of the book which is the courtroom drama, I felt the pace of the book had slowed down due to the amount of repetitive information. My next criticism is that this book was not written with the same quality as the author’s first book “Take it back”.

I love Kia Abdullah’s books and her writing style is flawless. So I was super excited to read her latest book. I don’t know what I expected but I was shocked to read that it was concerning the death of a child. Such a taboo subject. I was excited but also slightly reticent about starting the novel.The main character is Leila Syed, an ambitious and successful woman, married to Will and a partner in an architectural firm. She has come a long way from the impoverished eighteen year old she was after being left by her parents following her mother’s suicide. She adopted her sister Yasmin who she looked after throughout her life, until she was married to Andrew. Yasmin and Andrew have a child, Max, who Leila is often asked to look after.One day, Leila is asked to take Max to nursery school as his father has been called into work in an emergency. Yasmin is already in work. Despite being horrendously busy, Leila agrees and Max is strapped into her back seat for the drive to the nursery. However things are not straightforward as Leila herself is asked to go into her work as soon as possible to locate some missing blueprints. Leila is contacted by Andrew later to say that the nursery had contacted him as Max never turned up. Max had been forgotten by her in her haste to return to her own work emergency and therefore he had been sitting in the car for hours in what is one of the hottest days of the year.Following his death, Leila is charged with negligent manslaughter. A high profile court case ensues that attracts huge attention and garners harsh judgements. As expected of Kia’s work, there are lots of twists and turns. Family lives take a huge hit as sisters are turned against one another. Leila’s own marriage suffers. The differences between expectations of women and men are sharply played out in court. This was often difficult to read but it was also incredibly hard to stop reading. It took two reading filled afternoons to finish as I couldn’t wait to get to the end, find out what happened and why. With more twists and turns than the best rollercoaster the ending was unexpected and brilliant. I’m already eager to read her next novel.