Alicia Thompson
Publisher: Nine Star Press, 2024
Publisher’s blurb
Would you help a child desperate to be found? Even if you realise he’s dead?
In 2011, Toby Soames dies from a freak accident on Hampstead Heath; Charlie Falk simply disappears. Two years later, Australian Adele Soames returns to London to be nearer her son and the places he loved. She is joined in her pilgrimages to the heath by Charlie. Charlie tells her things, unnerving things about his last day alive.
Enter DS Xandra Bentley, a member of Adele’s grief support group at St Bart’s. Xandra has worked on several cold cases of missing boys in the area and Adele’s information reignites her interest. As new evidence comes to light, Adele has the creeping dread that she is bringing danger closer to home.
Review
by Sherryl Clark
One thing I really enjoy in a book is when I’ve finished the first couple of chapters and think – Ah, yes, this is going to be a good read. I ended up reading Ex in two days, as I became involved in Adele’s story.
When she returns to London, Adele feels more settled than she did in her Australian home – not just because she is ‘close’ to her son, who’d died playing football, but because everything feels more familiar. Until it doesn’t. The first unsettling thing is Charlie, who keeps appearing at the seat where she watches the kids’ football games. Then Adele starts finding other odd things, especially when she does a clear-out of junk in the attic.
One of the key strengths of this novel is its characters and deep point of view. Sure, Adele is gradually lurching nearer and nearer to the edge of sanity when more discoveries are made and secrets are revealed, but it never slides into melodrama. Adele’s emotions and realisations felt authentic and kept me engaged with her and invested in what happens to her.
The novel raises great questions about how well we know the people in our lives, and how deep grief can cover over the holes and gaps until finally the truth of those relationships starts to emerge. Do we really know the people in our lives, even those on the periphery, or do we let our minds shape them into who we want them to be – and ignore the alarm bells? Adele’s friendships with two women she meets go in unexpected directions, but that solid feeling of having ‘someone who’s got your back’ is so important and creates a positive core to the story.
I maybe could have guessed the ending if I’d tried harder, but I wanted to enjoy the unfolding of clues (via the police detective character, and sometimes Adele) entwined with the various characters, all of whom were engaging and had their own small stories. I particularly enjoyed how Adele’s relationship with her nephew developed, despite the other upheavals in her life.
The author, Alicia Thompson has dug deep to create her characters and bring them to life and I was invested in them early, cared what happened in their lives. Ex is a well-paced and thought-provoking story.