Description
Book Synopsis''Barkworth is excruciatingly good... An impressive first book'' OBSERVER
A COSMOPOLITAN BEST BOOKS OF SUMMER 2020 pick
HEAT magazine''s READ OF THE WEEK - ''the evocative one''
''I wanted to stay within its pages forever'' CLARE MACKINTOSH
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This summer burns with secrets...
It is too hot to sleep. To work. To be questioned time and again by the police.
At the beginning of a stifling, sultry summer, everything shifts irrevocably when Lily doesn''t come home one afternoon.
Rachel is Lily''s teacher. Her daughter Mia is Lily''s best friend. The girls are fifteen - almost women, still children.
As Rachel becomes increasingly fixated on Lily''s absence, she finds herself breaking fragile trusts and confronting impossible choices she never thought she''d face.
It wasn''t supposed to happen like this.
Intoxicating and compulsive, Heatstroke is a
Trade Review
Barkworth is excruciatingly good at encapsulating that point in life where Mia and Lily stand - on the edge of growing up... Intense and claustrophobic, this is an impressive first book * Observer *
A sultry, stifling debut * Cosmopolitan *
Gripping and intensely atmospheric... beautifully explores the complicated relationship between mothers and teenage daughters... you won't want to put this down * Heat *
A summer sizzler... with twists, turns and revelations in all the right places...This is Barkworth's first novel and she's hit the format out of the park * Evening Standard *
An atmospheric read that will draw you into its tangled web * Woman & Home *
Dark and unsettling * Red *
Barkworth has a pinsharp eye for detail...it's propulsive, thought-provoking and atmospheric * Daily Mail *
Read if you liked Big Little Lies... A torrid, tense story about forbidden passions, played out over one steamy summer
* Best *
A
bold and beautifully written novel of desire and danger * Mail on Sunday *
Painfully real, and so beautifully written
I wanted to stay within its pages forever. Heatstroke is
unsettling, challenging and utterly immersive -- Clare Mackintosh
Stylish and
sensual -- Kiran Millwood Hargrave
Tense, sultry, unsettling, sweaty and evocative . . .
A thrilling look at mothers and daughters, adolescence, sex, suburbia and secrets -- Nell Frizzell
Pulls you into its sweaty interior and keeps you gripped to the end.
Darkly atmospheric and so well written -- Renée Knight
Sexy, sensual, difficult, provocative - I was hooked for every twist, turn and revelation. This is
definitely one of the best reads of the summer. I was blown away -- Laura Jane Williams
I am
addicted!... A
gripping, dark and twisty read with
beautiful, poetic writing -- Emma Gannon
I
gulped this whole thing down in one sitting. It's
compulsive, sticky and full of gorgeous writing -- Kirstin Innes
Raw, unsparing and almost unbearably tender. Perfect sentences swim gracefully across every page, overlaying a narrative that delights in wrong-footing the readers' assumptions.
I couldn't tear myself away -- Erin Kelly
A scorching tale of obsession, betrayal and
the wounds that mothers and daughters inflict on each other in the name of love -- Tammy Cohen
Fevered and claustrophobic -- Jane Healey, author of The Animals at Lockwood Manor
