Book Review: "No One Saw A Thing" by Andrea Mara

I have had this on my Kindle for a while and have admittedly wanted to get back into reading thriller fiction. My way in was by actually reading a book called Insomnia by Sarah Pinborough and now, I think I can say I am now accustomed once again with crime/thrillers of the modern era. God knows what would happen if I started reading The British Library Crime Classics Series again. Nobody would see me for weeks if that happened.

I like to keep up to date with the latest crime and thriller trends of different aspects and authors and I think I can speak for all women when I say that our favourite so far has to be the subgenre of 'good for her' thrillers. I'm not sure how to react to this one I have read though because the ending was kind of blindingly obvious from the outset (and I am quite proud to have guessed what the ending was going to be). But, even though it was predictable, it was still heavily engrossing and immersive, causing me to read the whole thing in a couple of hours.

The book starts with an Irish woman in London. Sive has two daughters and a son: Faye who is six, Bea who is two and Toby who is four months old. She is at a train station and tells her daughters to get on whilst she pushes the pram towards the entrance. The doors shut and her daughters disappear without her with Bea popping up sometime later. The only problem is that Faye doesn't resurface and nobody can say they have even seen her. Apparently, there was no other child with Bea.

Sive calls her husband Aaron to tell him their daughter is missing and the police get right to it straight away. In the midst of this, the couple's friends turn up to help as to a journalist named Jude who states that she is there for a story - but ends up getting wound up in the emotions of the case like everyone else. As we get flashbacks to the past and stories of the days before, we realise that this case may be much bigger than simply a person trying to abduct a child or even a child going missing. When a woman reports that she saw Faye holding hands with an adult, the couple think it is hitting too close to home.

The past uncovers a story about a house fire in which one of the friend's sisters was killed. It also uncovers a blackmailing scandal, a sex offenders register and some shoddy reasons for excluding, or even hiding, bathroom video evidence from a bank. All of this years before the child goes missing and yet, all of it becomes more blindingly relevant as the story progresses. There is one thing that everyone knows: that not everyone is telling the truth. As someone fakes a pregnancy, another person's child is not biologically theirs, someone else isn't telling the truth about their mother - things start to boil over as there is one person that links every bad event in the text. Although it is pretty obvious to see who that is, the story is woven is a very intricate way and that is the joy of it.

The one thing I liked about this book is that there was someone whom the reader could hold on to and for me, that was Maggie and Sive. Maggie and Sive seem to be the only likeable characters apart from Jude in the whole book. Jude is a little bit too unemotional to hold on to though even though the character is so well written. Maggie and Sive seem to have this unbreakable connection which the reader can really rely on when it comes to pulling through for the other - and eventually they do in the best way.

I can honestly say that this book was probably one the better thrillers I have read this year and it has really got me back into reading those paperback crime novels that I can see in recommendations from the Richard and Judy Book Club. I have really had a great experience with this one and I don't want to say too much but I think you will really enjoy it too. It is a fantastic and intricate novel of lies on top of lies.