The Phantom Child by A.J. Wills Published by Cherry Tree Publishing on February 1, 2024
Genres: Kidnapping Thrillers, Psychological Fiction
Format: ARC, eBook
Source: Author, ZooLoos Book Tours
Buy on Amazon
Is her child really missing? Or did he never exist at all?
With cracks beginning to show in her marriage, Karina thinks a short break to a luxury villa in Turkey with her husband, Ronan, and their four-year-old son, Jacob, is just what the family needs.
It’ll be a chance to relax, enjoy some good food, and more importantly to reconnect with the people she loves the most.
But on their first morning, Karina is startled to discover she’s slept in late and not been woken by Jacob.
He’s an early riser who always comes into their bed pestering them to make him breakfast.
So where is he? A needle of fear spikes through Karina’s veins.
She rushes to his room, but his bed is empty and he’s nowhere to be found in the villa.
But when she wakes Ronan, frantic with worry, and tells him their son is missing, he stares at her blankly.
He says he has no idea what she’s talking about and that they don’t have any children.
He’s certainly never heard of a boy called Jacob…
My Thoughts
The Phantom Child is a pulse-pounding psychological thriller that takes the reader from start to finish on the edge of their seat, never letting up. One morning, on a family vacation in a hotel by the sea far away from home, Karina wakes up to discover her son Jacob missing. Her world falls apart when her husband, Ronan, says that they’ve never had a child, and she becomes frantic in the search for him.
The author writes a suspenseful tale with twists and turns, in which no one knows whether the characters are real. It probes into the dark themes of love and trust and asks how far one would go to protect their kin. With shiver-making events described in an emotionally turbulent way:
Suspense and mystery fill every moment of this harrowing tale. Here, a luxury villa in Turkey provides the eerie backdrop. In the author’s descriptive writing, readers will understand Karina’s fright and confusion as she struggles to reconcile her lost son with what her husband is saying.
Fans of psychological thrillers will find The Phantom Child a must-read. This is a masterful exploration of paranoia, anxiety, and the ability of the mind to shape reality. These shocking revelations and haunting conclusions will stay with you long after turning the last page.
Thank you to Zoé from ZooLoo’s Book Tours and the author for allowing me to read and review this book.
About A.J. Wills
AJ Wills writes standalone psychological thrillers with twisty plots.
He’s a former journalist who wrote in his spare time, before and after work for ten years, until he was finally able to fulfil his lifelong dream of becoming a fulltime author in May 2021.
He’s never looked back and now runs a small independent publishing company, Cherry Tree Publishing with his wife, AJ McDine, also a thriller writer.
He said: “I’ve always loved thrillers, but psychological thrillers hold a special interest for me because they’re about the scary, insane, disturbing things that happen to ordinary people – and we can all relate to them on some level.”
He lives in Kent in the south east of England.
Reading this book contributed to these challenges:
