Book 24 - Heatstroke by Hazel Barkworth

Reading date - August 2020

This book held so much promise..and then turned into a massive chick-lit fest.  I really dislike chick-lit because it comes with the connotation that women are more suited to reading light, fluffy books with no substance bar drama.  I mean god forbid we be intelligent beings who like being educated by the books we read.

This is my first disappointment with this book.  My second disappointment was the fact that it was all a bit too try-hard.  You can tell this book is written by someone who studied English and is desperate to get out everything they've learnt into a book, there are some places where there is way too much description.  For example, nobody needs an in-depth description of a washing up sponge.  The book also tries way too hard to be super modern and down with the kids.

The basic premise is easy to guess even before the twists are revealed.  There are spoilers ahead...
The book is called Heatwave because the story is set in the summer time and there is a heatwave on.  This adds nothing to the story and is just a reason for the author to vomit out as many descriptive words as she can for a sweaty body.  I mean once you've told me it's hot and people are sweating..I get it. 

The story is told from the viewpoint of Rachel.  Rachel is a teacher, her husband is called Tim (he is away on business) and they have a 15 year old daughter called Mia.  

The book starts with Rachel watching Mia tanning in the garden..but the description puts me on edge because the author goes to great length about what the mum is thinking about the daughter's body, focusing in on the girl's bikini line and how hairless it is.  The mum is aware that she doesn't have hair on her legs yet but then wonders how she tames the bikini line and her pubic hair.  Very weird!!  I highly doubt any mum thinks about their daughter that way. And, being a girl myself, how do you get pubic hair before hair on your legs?!

Mia has a sleepover with her friends.  The next day, one of the girls who should have been at the sleepover goes missing.  I guessed that she had run off with a teacher at the school..my point was proven when one of the mothers in the group tells Rachel that the girl (Lily) has taken a teddy with her from her mother's drawers.  So Lily is missing..

The book then chops and changes between Rachel's life (trying to hold her marriage with Tim together as he works far away from home, dealing with Mia and her missing friend and her school life).

Rachel quickly figures out that Lily has gone missing with a teacher.  The clues are all there, the first day the girl is missing, Rachel has to stand in for the science teacher.  How does she figure it out?  Well..she, along with the girl's mum go through the girl's belongings and finds some lyrics she knows the music teacher loves. How does she know this? He dropped her off once and they spent ages listening to it in his car.  Rachel does not tell anyone about the fact that Lily is with the teacher because it will rip her family apart.  I also don't know how realistic this is, her marriage is falling apart anyway and it feels like she didn't tell because SHE didn't want to be seen as the villain of the piece, she kept in because of how people would see her, forget about how it would impact her child.

The book goes through the kids at school, how everyone is coping and then snippets of what Lily and the teacher are doing.  But then, something else comes about...Rachel has also been sleeping with the teacher.  The book then has snippets of them together, in clandestine meetings..

It's a bit overly sexual in places (coming from me, that's something). I can take filth.  That's fine. It's the way that the author describes underage bodies that doesn't sit right with me..

Anyway, Rachel goes through Mia's phone, Mia finds out but she keeps it quiet and does the same to her mum.  She finds out about the affair and phones the police to tell them where Lily is.

It's a strange book in that things are just thrown together for shock value.  Lily comes back and decides to come to the end of year prom.  Nothing more is made of the teacher she was groomed by.  Then for some reason, Mia takes a bad E.

I don't know how I feel about this book but my feelings are more negative than positive.  It could have been great if the author didn't just want to show off how many descriptors she knew.  The end also is ridiculous and totally unbelievable.