4 Stars from me
Wow this book has some uber negative reviews! Like, WOW! Yet I loved it. I found myself utterly hooked in by Beth’s obsessive madness and bloody minded determination utterly captivating.
Don’t get me wrong, I think Rom-Com-Dom should have left her years ago – or vice versa – they aren’t suited at all and he is almost certainly a secret serial killer…
But the whole dogged pursuit of the truth was brilliant and the storyline itself was staggering in it’s originality – how does one even begin to think that stuff up?!
I loved Sophie Hannah’s Little Face and The Carrier and have enjoyed many of her other novels but this one was something else!
I also greatly enjoyed the UK setting as this is an area that I know well so it made it all the more enticing.
Haven’t They Grown is dark, challenging and utterly compelling – I read it in two sittings and absolutely loved it.
Blurb: All Beth has to do is drive her son to his Under-14s away match, watch him play, and bring him home.
Just because she knows her ex-best friend lives near the football ground, that doesn’t mean she has to drive past her house and try to catch a glimpse of her. Why would Beth do that, and risk dredging up painful memories? She hasn’t seen Flora for twelve years. She doesn’t want to see her today, or ever again.
But she can’t resist. She parks outside the open gates of Newnham House, watches from across the road as Flora and her children Thomas and Emily step out of the car. Except… There’s something terribly wrong. Flora looks the same, only older. As Beth would have expected. It’s the children. Twelve years ago, Thomas and Emily were five and three years old. Today, they look precisely as they did then.
They are still five and three. They are Thomas and Emily without a doubt – Hilary hears Flora call them by their names – but they haven’t changed at all.
They are no taller, no older… Why haven’t they grown?
Read and Rated 