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Heatstroke
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 darkly gripping, thought-provoking novel of crossed boundaries, power and betrayal, that plays with expectations at every turn.
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 darkly gripping, thought-provoking novel of crossed boundaries, power and betrayal, that plays with expectations at every turn.
320 pages, Hardcover
First published May 28, 2020
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 129 reviews
March 26, 2022
Rachel is a middle-aged teacher, married, with one teenage daughter. She’s restless. Her job doesn’t satisfy, her husband Tim is absent on business, and her daughter Mia is on the cusp of fleeing the nest.
Then, one blazing hot summer’s day, her daughter’s best friend Lily goes missing. At first, it’s assumed she’s just being a kid, then that some sinister figure has spirited her away for his own ends. But then it becomes obvious she’d left of her own accord with nothing more than the clothes she stood up in, some lipsticks, and a lacy teddy from her mother’s underwear drawer. So, she wasn’t kidnapped.
We learn that Lily had a secret life. This is no spoiler, and there’s plenty more secrets and lies to discover before the ending. You see, Rachel knows what happened. But should she tell, or keep the secret to herself?
This novel does a good job of capturing Rachel’s dissatisfaction with what seems on the outside to be a perfect life. But life isn’t what was promised on the side of the packet. Sorrow, rage, and anger where there should be sweetness and light.
A satisfying enough read, although sometimes Rachel’s self indulgence does grate, and it’s a pity there’s no one there to tell her to get a grip!
Then, one blazing hot summer’s day, her daughter’s best friend Lily goes missing. At first, it’s assumed she’s just being a kid, then that some sinister figure has spirited her away for his own ends. But then it becomes obvious she’d left of her own accord with nothing more than the clothes she stood up in, some lipsticks, and a lacy teddy from her mother’s underwear drawer. So, she wasn’t kidnapped.
We learn that Lily had a secret life. This is no spoiler, and there’s plenty more secrets and lies to discover before the ending. You see, Rachel knows what happened. But should she tell, or keep the secret to herself?
This novel does a good job of capturing Rachel’s dissatisfaction with what seems on the outside to be a perfect life. But life isn’t what was promised on the side of the packet. Sorrow, rage, and anger where there should be sweetness and light.
A satisfying enough read, although sometimes Rachel’s self indulgence does grate, and it’s a pity there’s no one there to tell her to get a grip!
January 5, 2023
Very very well written!!!
June 4, 2020
Heatstroke is a tense, atmospheric novel from Hazel Barkworth about mothers and daughters, desire and obsession, trust and betrayal.
It begins when the best friend of Rachel’s fifteen year old daughter, Mia, disappears, but this is not really a story about the missing Lily, it is about what Rachel feels she is losing.... her daughter, her youth, her attractiveness, and perhaps her mind.
Rachel presents initially as a somewhat depressed, slightly overprotective, devoted mother, but as the book progresses Barkworth reveals a complex character, with a searing secret that has the potential to burn her world to the ground.
The author’s writing is evocative and gripping, the fevered, oppressive atmosphere of the heatwave reflects Rachel’s tumultuous emotional state as the tension stretches to breaking point.
Yet I was left feeling somewhat underwhelmed by the narrative, though I can’t quite articulate why. Still, this is an impressive debut, and I’ll be interested in reading what Barkworth writes next.
It begins when the best friend of Rachel’s fifteen year old daughter, Mia, disappears, but this is not really a story about the missing Lily, it is about what Rachel feels she is losing.... her daughter, her youth, her attractiveness, and perhaps her mind.
Rachel presents initially as a somewhat depressed, slightly overprotective, devoted mother, but as the book progresses Barkworth reveals a complex character, with a searing secret that has the potential to burn her world to the ground.
The author’s writing is evocative and gripping, the fevered, oppressive atmosphere of the heatwave reflects Rachel’s tumultuous emotional state as the tension stretches to breaking point.
Yet I was left feeling somewhat underwhelmed by the narrative, though I can’t quite articulate why. Still, this is an impressive debut, and I’ll be interested in reading what Barkworth writes next.
August 25, 2021
This is a tale that plays out in the blazing heat of Summer. As the temperatures soar so does the imagination of unlikeable main character Rachel, mother of Mia. Rachel is a teacher. She had an affair with a fellow teacher(Mark) and when Mia's best friend Lily goes missing, of her own volition with Mark, Rachel becomes obsessed with what they might be up to. She fails to speak up in attempting to find Lily for fear of her own relationship coming to the fore and threatening her marriage and family. While there were several well written descriptions, the slow burn of Rachel being selfish and fantasizing at length about Mark and youth and what might have been, made the story lose its impact for me. On the plus side, without giving away spoilers, it serves as a reminder that secrets will out. Moreover it's never wrong to do the right thing, no matter the cost and you're a parent for a reason. To parent. Not to befriend nor to compete with your children. The ending was abrupt leaving the reader to decide what might have been said between two parties. I'd like to think it was "I forgive you". 3 Stars.
November 30, 2019
An impressionistic piece of writing that is full of atmosphere: heated, fevered, febrile - as a schoolgirl goes missing, and her best friend and best friend's mother find themselves caught in an emotional tempest of power, secrets and love.
Some of the writing feels laboured and try-hard ('an untouched rump of avocado', 'the roof of Rachel's mouth throbbed') and, fundamentally, this is a story that is currently being written to death in commercial literature with very little new being said.
The approach here of not so much developing a story as giving a series of word pictures of key moments makes this feel a little different - but it's also frustrating that people behave incomprehensibly, particularly Rachel as both mother and teacher. Worth a read it the blurb grabs you but this still has a first-novel feel about it.The
ARC from NetGalley
December 5, 2020
I'm torn about this book. The writing is good. Especially for a debut novel. We feel the heat and oppression, not just of the weather, but of the relationships. But the subject matter made me very uncomfortable. Rachel is so well written that I hated her. She is so self obsessed and believes that any male cannot resist her. We explore her relationships with her daughter and various other males in the book, but oddly, not her husband.
Rachel is a hypocrite and makes bad decisions because she is so selfish and self centred, whilst trying to tell her daughter Mia what to do and how to behave. We see the roles reverse as Mia acts more like an adult and Rachel more like a child. I wanted to slap Rachel and hug Mia and the abrupt ending left me wondering if anything was ever resolved. Also I found the pace rather slow.
Thank you Pigeonhole and Hazel Barkworth.
Rachel is a hypocrite and makes bad decisions because she is so selfish and self centred, whilst trying to tell her daughter Mia what to do and how to behave. We see the roles reverse as Mia acts more like an adult and Rachel more like a child. I wanted to slap Rachel and hug Mia and the abrupt ending left me wondering if anything was ever resolved. Also I found the pace rather slow.
Thank you Pigeonhole and Hazel Barkworth.
December 5, 2020
This book is filled with evocative writing, but in my opinion, the plot is empty and totally underwhelming. There is no growth in any of the characters, the behaviour of the protagonist, Rachel, is ridiculous, and while the theme of the heatwave is carried out well, it in no way excuses or explains the actions and outcomes in the book. Thanks to The Pigeonhole and Hazel for the opportunity to read the book.
August 13, 2020
I personally found it overwritten, horrible main character and didn't really go anywhere
July 3, 2020
In this simmering psychological thriller, Rachel teaches at a secondary school which her own daughter, Mia, also attends. One weekend, Mia has a sleepover with her usual clique from school, but her friend Lily doesn't come along. Except Lily's mother thinks that she has, and it soon becomes clear that Lily has disappeared. Does Mia know where Lily is - or, perhaps more importantly, with whom? And why is Rachel's obsession with the case so claustrophobically intense? Is it because she's been having an illicit relationship with a man of her own, while her husband works overseas?
As the title suggests, Heatstroke is set during a swelteringly hot summer, in the build-up to the end of the school term, and the oppressive, steamy heat is a suitable backdrop for a story of passion, obsession and envy. It's more than a thriller, though - in fact, the actual plot is fairly straightforward and doesn't develop especially quickly. It also explores the relationships between mothers and their teenage daughters and the slight undertones of competition and resentment that can colour them.
The story opens with Rachel watching her teenage daughter Mia sunbathing in the garden and yet the description felt more like Humbert Humbert's descriptions of Lolita than a mother watching her daughter and there are certainly times when Rachel's protectiveness tips over into something intrusive at best and sinister at worst. Rachel also invents a whole narrative about Lily, where she might be and who she might be with, as if she is simultaneously worried and fascinated by the underage schoolgirl's relationship with an adult man, almost envious of it. At the same time, she looks back to her own recent affair.
Rachel's affair is clearly very much influenced by her desire to recapture her lost youth - and her lover appears to be attracted to her for that reason, taking pleasure in playing the role of the manipulator leading a more naive partner off the rails and encouraging her to be reckless and spontaneous.
I found it very hard to sympathise with Rachel - not that it should be necessary to enjoy the book, but at times it would have helped. She makes some terrible decisions, at least one of of them unforgivable, and I also cringed at the descriptions of her affair. She's supposedly a smart, capable woman who can command the attention of a class of unruly teenagers, and her sudden transformation into a passive ingenue in the company of a man who seemed to me like a pretentious idiot was quite depressing.
My other criticism of Heatstroke is that its ending felt abrupt and anticlimactic, not really worthy of the brooding tension that has built up to it. There is also a strong parallel between Lily's situation and a real-life case involving a 15-year-old girl a few years ago, and even the minor details are so notably alike that the similarities were impossible to ignore: I found this quite distracting and I think the author would have done better to take her inspiration from real events and then add more details of her own.
Heatstroke is, however, a great debut novel of its genre: well-written, unsettling and intense and an ideal read for hot summer days in lockdown.
As the title suggests, Heatstroke is set during a swelteringly hot summer, in the build-up to the end of the school term, and the oppressive, steamy heat is a suitable backdrop for a story of passion, obsession and envy. It's more than a thriller, though - in fact, the actual plot is fairly straightforward and doesn't develop especially quickly. It also explores the relationships between mothers and their teenage daughters and the slight undertones of competition and resentment that can colour them.
The story opens with Rachel watching her teenage daughter Mia sunbathing in the garden and yet the description felt more like Humbert Humbert's descriptions of Lolita than a mother watching her daughter and there are certainly times when Rachel's protectiveness tips over into something intrusive at best and sinister at worst. Rachel also invents a whole narrative about Lily, where she might be and who she might be with, as if she is simultaneously worried and fascinated by the underage schoolgirl's relationship with an adult man, almost envious of it. At the same time, she looks back to her own recent affair.
Rachel's affair is clearly very much influenced by her desire to recapture her lost youth - and her lover appears to be attracted to her for that reason, taking pleasure in playing the role of the manipulator leading a more naive partner off the rails and encouraging her to be reckless and spontaneous.
I found it very hard to sympathise with Rachel - not that it should be necessary to enjoy the book, but at times it would have helped. She makes some terrible decisions, at least one of of them unforgivable, and I also cringed at the descriptions of her affair. She's supposedly a smart, capable woman who can command the attention of a class of unruly teenagers, and her sudden transformation into a passive ingenue in the company of a man who seemed to me like a pretentious idiot was quite depressing.
My other criticism of Heatstroke is that its ending felt abrupt and anticlimactic, not really worthy of the brooding tension that has built up to it. There is also a strong parallel between Lily's situation and a real-life case involving a 15-year-old girl a few years ago, and even the minor details are so notably alike that the similarities were impossible to ignore: I found this quite distracting and I think the author would have done better to take her inspiration from real events and then add more details of her own.
Heatstroke is, however, a great debut novel of its genre: well-written, unsettling and intense and an ideal read for hot summer days in lockdown.
December 5, 2020
3.5 stars, I've rounded it up.
I really enjoyed this to start with. You can feel the oppressive heat from the summer and the tension. It's great writing. Rachel is a high school teacher and mother to Mia. One of Mia's friends Lily disappears and it soon transpires with one of her teachers who Rachel has had an affair with.
The story throws up lots of questions and doing the right thing as a parent which Rachel is sadly lacking those skills.
I found Rachel very frustrating and irritating. The story finished abruptly and you are left to come to your own conclusion.
Thanks yo Pigeonhole and Hazel for the opportunity to read this
I really enjoyed this to start with. You can feel the oppressive heat from the summer and the tension. It's great writing. Rachel is a high school teacher and mother to Mia. One of Mia's friends Lily disappears and it soon transpires with one of her teachers who Rachel has had an affair with.
The story throws up lots of questions and doing the right thing as a parent which Rachel is sadly lacking those skills.
I found Rachel very frustrating and irritating. The story finished abruptly and you are left to come to your own conclusion.
Thanks yo Pigeonhole and Hazel for the opportunity to read this
December 6, 2020
2.5 stars for the lovely prose.
A novel jam-packed with potential that it sadly never reached. Not my cup of tea.
A novel jam-packed with potential that it sadly never reached. Not my cup of tea.
May 28, 2020
Heatstroke is an intense story set across a couple of weeks during the summer.
Rachel Collins is a secondary school English and drama teacher. When one of the girls from her school, 15 year old Lily, goes missing, it's shocking and everyone is glued to the television wondering what's happened to her. The feelings are compounded by the fact that Mia, Rachel's daughter, is one of Lily's close group of friends. This is a girl who has been at Rachel's house, who she knows well.
I have to say though that this is only the tip of the iceberg where Rachel's story is concerned. As the synopsis doesn't give more away neither will I, but believe me when I say there is so much hidden below the surface of this book. It's a tale of obsession and wrong choices that affect Rachel's judgement.
It's a stroke of genius on the part of Hazel Barkworth to make Rachel a teacher and Lily one of her pupils. It really heightened the tension and also brought to the forefront of my mind how teachers are in such a position of trust and how easy it can be to break that trust. After all, teachers are still human beings and still capable of getting it wrong.
Another stroke of genius is setting it all during a hot and sultry summer. The weather provides such an atmospheric backdrop to the unfolding events, and the descriptions of lost sleep, clamminess and make up sliding off faces put me right there in the heat of the moment.
Heatstroke is a fabulous debut novel. It's the sort of book with no major events and yet every human emotion is contained within the pages. Yes, Lily going missing is important, but it's more the catalyst for a measured story of fixation and passion rather than the story of a frantic search for a girl. A couple of really unexpected developments provided some nice curveballs and made this a really addictive and powerful story.
Rachel Collins is a secondary school English and drama teacher. When one of the girls from her school, 15 year old Lily, goes missing, it's shocking and everyone is glued to the television wondering what's happened to her. The feelings are compounded by the fact that Mia, Rachel's daughter, is one of Lily's close group of friends. This is a girl who has been at Rachel's house, who she knows well.
I have to say though that this is only the tip of the iceberg where Rachel's story is concerned. As the synopsis doesn't give more away neither will I, but believe me when I say there is so much hidden below the surface of this book. It's a tale of obsession and wrong choices that affect Rachel's judgement.
It's a stroke of genius on the part of Hazel Barkworth to make Rachel a teacher and Lily one of her pupils. It really heightened the tension and also brought to the forefront of my mind how teachers are in such a position of trust and how easy it can be to break that trust. After all, teachers are still human beings and still capable of getting it wrong.
Another stroke of genius is setting it all during a hot and sultry summer. The weather provides such an atmospheric backdrop to the unfolding events, and the descriptions of lost sleep, clamminess and make up sliding off faces put me right there in the heat of the moment.
Heatstroke is a fabulous debut novel. It's the sort of book with no major events and yet every human emotion is contained within the pages. Yes, Lily going missing is important, but it's more the catalyst for a measured story of fixation and passion rather than the story of a frantic search for a girl. A couple of really unexpected developments provided some nice curveballs and made this a really addictive and powerful story.
December 5, 2020
This was a novel about a middle-aged teacher wanting to relive her youth and, in doing so, failing to report to the police what she knew about a missing girl and her teacher. It was well written in places and the character of Rachel was well described, so much so that you wanted to slap her on several occasions! For me, it became rather repetitive and the ending was a let-down. It was abrupt and left lots of questions unanswered. Thanks to Pigeonhole and Hazel for giving me the chance to read it.
April 19, 2020
I enjoyed this novel, but it wasn't exactly what I thought it was going to be. It's quite hard to explain in a review, as I don't want to give anything away for potential readers.
Set during one hot, hazy summer, this novel seems to be about the disappearance of a 15 year-old girl, Lily. Lily is best friends with Mia, whose mother Rachel works as a teacher at their school. But, what you discover as this novel progresses is that Lily's disappearance is only part of this book's plot. There isn't exactly a twist to this novel, but I don't think this matters. I don't want to give anything away, but there is something else which propels this novel forwards, and it is actually quite clever.
At the heart of this tale is also the examination of the relationships between mothers and daughters. The tension which can simmer, as girls grow into young women. The anxieties, sometimes even the jealousies which can grow. But also the secrets that both mothers and daughters keep. As a way of signifying the tension that is building throughout this story, Barkworth uses the heat of the weather to symbolise the tension of the situation unfurling. By the end of the book, when the resolution comes into sight, the characters are able to breathe again, the heat breaks and the rain finally begins to fall.
I would recommend this to anyone who likes psychological thrillers. My only word of advice, if that's the right word, is don't come to it expecting it to have twists and turns. It is, still, a very engaging book and well written.
Set during one hot, hazy summer, this novel seems to be about the disappearance of a 15 year-old girl, Lily. Lily is best friends with Mia, whose mother Rachel works as a teacher at their school. But, what you discover as this novel progresses is that Lily's disappearance is only part of this book's plot. There isn't exactly a twist to this novel, but I don't think this matters. I don't want to give anything away, but there is something else which propels this novel forwards, and it is actually quite clever.
At the heart of this tale is also the examination of the relationships between mothers and daughters. The tension which can simmer, as girls grow into young women. The anxieties, sometimes even the jealousies which can grow. But also the secrets that both mothers and daughters keep. As a way of signifying the tension that is building throughout this story, Barkworth uses the heat of the weather to symbolise the tension of the situation unfurling. By the end of the book, when the resolution comes into sight, the characters are able to breathe again, the heat breaks and the rain finally begins to fall.
I would recommend this to anyone who likes psychological thrillers. My only word of advice, if that's the right word, is don't come to it expecting it to have twists and turns. It is, still, a very engaging book and well written.
April 25, 2020
Totally gripped from beginning to end. I enjoyed so much getting immersed in Rachel’s thoughts, feelings and actions - in all of their complexity. The author has done a masterful job of conjuring up that feeling of intoxicating summer heat and all of the implications that has for sense and judgement... Would highly recommend!
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June 13, 2021When I read the blurb "in the middle of a stifling heatwave, Rachel, Lily and Mia stand on the edge of irrevocable change...", I thought this was going to be completely suited to my tastes as I absolutely love a book filled with tension set against the backdrop of a hot summer and I think that's one of the reasons why I was left ultimately disappointed by this book. The attempts to build up that stifling backdrop were there, but they were only there for the first few chapters only to be promptly forgotten and I felt that even those attempts lacked subtlety. Onto the plot and, while I appreciate Rachel was supposed to be a flawed and selfish protagonist, the notion of romanticising the grooming and kidnap of a schoolgirl - in addition to actively sustaining her plight through inaction - just didn't sit comfortably with me at all. The victim existed purely as abstract imagery for the novel and I'm not entirely sure what the actual point was? The abrupt ending that didn't resolve anything as far as Rachel was concerned (and there was a lot that needed to be resolved, even if only on an emotional level) only added to this sense and pretty much every other plotline was still dangling. Lots of disappointment.
December 5, 2020
The story started interesting and enthralling. However I felt some parts were getting too long and somewhat confusing. The ending was for me too abrupt.
December 5, 2020
I liked the plot to this book but not the way it was written, it really dragged at times and the ending feels like it wasn’t the end!?! Too many questions left unanswered.
July 23, 2024
First part was gripping; second part a long and drawn out disappointment.
July 29, 2024
Hazel Barkworth’s Heatstroke is billed as a thriller, but is probably better described as literary fiction; I found that there were a number of genuinely unexpected moments, but these can’t exactly be classified as the kind of twists that genre novels demand. Rachel’s relationship with her fifteen-year-old daughter Mia is already under strain when Mia’s best friend Lily goes missing. We soon discover that Lily has not been abducted, but has gone of her own accord, sending shockwaves through the school where Rachel teaches, and where she’s been closely involved in directing a production of Tennessee Williams’s The Glass Menagerie, with Lily cast as the fragile Laura. Rachel finds her fears about her own daughter’s progress towards adulthood intensifying, but at the same time, she is pulled back irresistibly to her own adolescence, which was not marked by ‘sweet perfume… in a crystal star’ but black eyeliner and ripped tights. She becomes obsessed with how her own ageing body contrasts with her daughter’s effortless youth. (Cleverly, Barkworth only gives us one clue about what Rachel feels she’s missed out on; at a dinner party, as the guests talk about why they chose their teaching careers, Rachel admits ‘I thought I’d be something quite different’, then refuses to elaborate. ‘Don’t play it down, Rach’, her husband interjects. ‘Rachel was going to be a rock star, she was in a pretty successful band’. We know nothing else about what happened.)
Given this, even though the subject-matter of this novel is very close to that of Kate Elizabeth Russell’s My Dark Vanessa (which I haven’t read), it reminded me most strongly of Zoe Heller’s Notes on A Scandal – indeed, there is a climatic dressing-up scene that feels like a deliberate homage, but is, if anything, even more powerful. Barkworth treats this difficult and controversial material delicately. This book explores the dual set of narratives we impose on teenagers – especially teenage girls but also teenage boys – and how our ‘cult of youth’ is only harmful to actual adolescents. Rachel, alongside some of the other adults in the novel, meditates on Lily’s vulnerability and childlikeness, allowing this to feed a righteous fury, while at the same time constantly thinking about how sexy and confident other girls Lily’s age are. She describes Mia’s boyfriend as ‘physically a man, even if not legally’ while at the same time framing him firmly as an adolescent with no self-awareness: ‘It seemed odd that her poised daughter was drawn in by this lumpen ox.’ The ending of the novel unsurprisingly emphasises how much Rachel doesn’t know about her daughter, but rather than the traditional twist that unveils how hedonistic, dangerous and thoughtless her daughter’s life really is, Mia is revealed to us as kinder, braver and more serious than Rachel expected. Totally gripping, but also very thought-provoking.
Given this, even though the subject-matter of this novel is very close to that of Kate Elizabeth Russell’s My Dark Vanessa (which I haven’t read), it reminded me most strongly of Zoe Heller’s Notes on A Scandal – indeed, there is a climatic dressing-up scene that feels like a deliberate homage, but is, if anything, even more powerful. Barkworth treats this difficult and controversial material delicately. This book explores the dual set of narratives we impose on teenagers – especially teenage girls but also teenage boys – and how our ‘cult of youth’ is only harmful to actual adolescents. Rachel, alongside some of the other adults in the novel, meditates on Lily’s vulnerability and childlikeness, allowing this to feed a righteous fury, while at the same time constantly thinking about how sexy and confident other girls Lily’s age are. She describes Mia’s boyfriend as ‘physically a man, even if not legally’ while at the same time framing him firmly as an adolescent with no self-awareness: ‘It seemed odd that her poised daughter was drawn in by this lumpen ox.’ The ending of the novel unsurprisingly emphasises how much Rachel doesn’t know about her daughter, but rather than the traditional twist that unveils how hedonistic, dangerous and thoughtless her daughter’s life really is, Mia is revealed to us as kinder, braver and more serious than Rachel expected. Totally gripping, but also very thought-provoking.
May 26, 2020
Thank you for the opportunity to read this book.
I felt like it was a perfect, quick, summer beach/pool read. I liked it but I didn't love it. The story itself holds promise. Although the beginning started with the feeling of 'heat' it cooled down quickly towards the end. I didn't really find the characters believable enough, they were not fully developed and I felt like the tension (of which there were thrilling elements) ultimately got a little bit lost. I couldn't really pin point if the focus was supposed to be on the teacher/ student relationship or on the relationship between mother and daughter. I also couldn't decide between whether this book was a thriller or a love/ lust story, both themes were never really explored fully. I thought it was a good debut, and Hazel's writing is great, but I think there is some story development work that could be done to make the secrets revealed even more shocking to the reader.
I felt like it was a perfect, quick, summer beach/pool read. I liked it but I didn't love it. The story itself holds promise. Although the beginning started with the feeling of 'heat' it cooled down quickly towards the end. I didn't really find the characters believable enough, they were not fully developed and I felt like the tension (of which there were thrilling elements) ultimately got a little bit lost. I couldn't really pin point if the focus was supposed to be on the teacher/ student relationship or on the relationship between mother and daughter. I also couldn't decide between whether this book was a thriller or a love/ lust story, both themes were never really explored fully. I thought it was a good debut, and Hazel's writing is great, but I think there is some story development work that could be done to make the secrets revealed even more shocking to the reader.
July 25, 2021
From the first word (“Languid”) on, this novel drips with hot summer atmosphere, with its opposing connotations of discomfort and sweaty sexuality. Rachel is a teacher of adolescents as well as the mother of a 15-year-old, Mia. When Lily, a pupil who also happens to be one of Mia’s best friends, goes missing, Rachel is put in a tough spot. I mostly noted how Barkworth chose to construct the plot, especially when to reveal what. By the one-quarter point, Rachel works out what’s happened to Lily: ; by halfway, we know why Rachel isn’t telling the police all she knows:
The dynamic between Rachel and Mia as they decide whether to tell what they know is interesting. This is not the missing person mystery it at first appears to be, and I didn’t sense enough literary quality to keep me wanting to know what would happen next. I ended up skimming the last third. It would be suitable for readers of Rosamund Lupton, but novels about teenage consent are a dime a dozen these days and this paled in comparison to My Dark Vanessa. For a better sun-drenched novel, I recommend A Crime in the Neighborhood.
The dynamic between Rachel and Mia as they decide whether to tell what they know is interesting. This is not the missing person mystery it at first appears to be, and I didn’t sense enough literary quality to keep me wanting to know what would happen next. I ended up skimming the last third. It would be suitable for readers of Rosamund Lupton, but novels about teenage consent are a dime a dozen these days and this paled in comparison to My Dark Vanessa. For a better sun-drenched novel, I recommend A Crime in the Neighborhood.
January 2, 2021
Heatstroke
is an incredibly tense and compelling tale from Hazel Barkworth about mothers and daughters, trust and betrayal, ageing and coming-of-age and desire and obsession. Extremely absorbing and exciting I loved the in-depth character portrayal especially of the self-absorbed, narcissistic Rachel. Hazel Barkworth's writing was notably good and I kept having to remind myself that I was reading a début novel! Intoxicating and evocative, the torrid, sultry atmosphere of the heatwave reflected Rachel’s frenetic and turbulent emotional state as the tension was stretched to the eventual limits. I'm really looking forward to reading more from Hazel Barkworth.
I read Heatstroke in staves with other Pigeonholers as part of a group. A special thank you to Hazel Barkworth and The Pigeonhole for a complimentary copy of this novel at my request. This review is my unbiased opinion.
I read Heatstroke in staves with other Pigeonholers as part of a group. A special thank you to Hazel Barkworth and The Pigeonhole for a complimentary copy of this novel at my request. This review is my unbiased opinion.
September 10, 2022
Similar to My Dark Vanessa but less cplec writing... Still long chapters though!
I was really conflicted with this one as I despised the main character. She was lusting after her love affair, knowing he'd abducted a teenage girl and was raping her? But then publicly slashing him... but then not reporting him?! Wild!
And her ability to *want* to get close to her daughter but making no effort, just stalking her. She was a great character writing wise from the author, but an awful person 😂
But I loved how deep this story was and how it covered the challenges of being a teenager and bordering that step into adulthood but not being there yet.
I was really conflicted with this one as I despised the main character. She was lusting after her love affair, knowing he'd abducted a teenage girl and was raping her? But then publicly slashing him... but then not reporting him?! Wild!
And her ability to *want* to get close to her daughter but making no effort, just stalking her. She was a great character writing wise from the author, but an awful person 😂
But I loved how deep this story was and how it covered the challenges of being a teenager and bordering that step into adulthood but not being there yet.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
June 6, 2020
Rachel is a teacher and mum of Mia. It's a hot summer and her daughter is almost fifteen. One day, Mia's close friend Lily goes missing. It is completely out of character and no one knows if she has gone willingly or if it is something more sinister. As the story unfolds, it is clear Rachel knows more than she is letting on, and perhaps, so does Mia.
I won't go into more detail, as I always like to avoid spoilers, but this was such a tense and compulsive read, as promised. It canvasses the topic of youth and the age of consent, power and friendships. Definitely another one I'd recommend.
I won't go into more detail, as I always like to avoid spoilers, but this was such a tense and compulsive read, as promised. It canvasses the topic of youth and the age of consent, power and friendships. Definitely another one I'd recommend.
September 26, 2021
This starts off really interesting and the writing is something special, but at some point I found myself getting annoyed with the main character, Rachel, and that made the rest of the book a little tedious for me personally though the story was a good one.
January 4, 2023
Beautiful
May 19, 2020
Like other reviewers, I chose this because it was endorsed by so many writers I admire. But I really struggled with this one. I can see why people are saying it is a beach read because there is all manner of torrid, high octane relationships and exchanges on offer. My problem was that I found Rachel's reactions/actions utterly implausible. Yes - she was in a tight spot, which is really what we want in a thriller. But there is such darkness in her deceits - not just to Lily and Mia, but to Marianne and Debi. What about the notion that actions have consequences and that this is the route to restoring moral order?
Having said this, I have no doubt this title will do very well. I find myself wishing I could avoid awarding stars and instead opt for a button which says 'I accept that I am not the right reader for this title'.
With thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for letting me see an advance copy of this novel.
Having said this, I have no doubt this title will do very well. I find myself wishing I could avoid awarding stars and instead opt for a button which says 'I accept that I am not the right reader for this title'.
With thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for letting me see an advance copy of this novel.
June 24, 2022
My first DNF of the year because, as James Joyce said, life is too short to read a bad book.
I tried so hard to like this book, I really did. But it was just giving me so little. It came to a point where I was actually dreading reading it because I knew it was such a chore.
For me personally, the main character (Rachel) is very unlikeable and hard to resonate with. It was so irritating to me that she just was unable to do the right thing! It wasn’t mysterious or endearing, it was just really bloody annoying and I’d pretty much had enough of her by the second chapter. And the chapters are (unbearably) long. I was more than halfway through the book and only on chapter 5. And I think I’d aged 10 years in that time.
Something noted by a lot of others is that the amount of prose in this book is surely record breaking. There’s an entire paragraph dedicated to someone eating a Big Mac meal. I didn’t realise someone could write so much about a burger. It just felt overwhelmingly too much. There wasn’t enough dialogue, not enough build of relationships. It was just page after page of heavy description that added nothing to the suspense or plot. I definitely don’t feel guilty that I started to skim read past the masses of text in some points so I felt like I was actually making progress on the plot. But the progress was just very flatlined. I think(?) this is supposed to be a semi-thriller style book, and I just did not feel any tension or suspense whatsoever. It just felt so very bland.
I just really could not get on with it at all. Such a shame as I was super excited for it given the reviews on the front cover. I think the one star is dedicated to the physical book being nice and floppy which I liked. That’s about it. :-(
I tried so hard to like this book, I really did. But it was just giving me so little. It came to a point where I was actually dreading reading it because I knew it was such a chore.
For me personally, the main character (Rachel) is very unlikeable and hard to resonate with. It was so irritating to me that she just was unable to do the right thing! It wasn’t mysterious or endearing, it was just really bloody annoying and I’d pretty much had enough of her by the second chapter. And the chapters are (unbearably) long. I was more than halfway through the book and only on chapter 5. And I think I’d aged 10 years in that time.
Something noted by a lot of others is that the amount of prose in this book is surely record breaking. There’s an entire paragraph dedicated to someone eating a Big Mac meal. I didn’t realise someone could write so much about a burger. It just felt overwhelmingly too much. There wasn’t enough dialogue, not enough build of relationships. It was just page after page of heavy description that added nothing to the suspense or plot. I definitely don’t feel guilty that I started to skim read past the masses of text in some points so I felt like I was actually making progress on the plot. But the progress was just very flatlined. I think(?) this is supposed to be a semi-thriller style book, and I just did not feel any tension or suspense whatsoever. It just felt so very bland.
I just really could not get on with it at all. Such a shame as I was super excited for it given the reviews on the front cover. I think the one star is dedicated to the physical book being nice and floppy which I liked. That’s about it. :-(
April 17, 2020
A compelling and utterly convincing exploration of ageing, of coming of age, and the tensions that smoulder between mother and daughter. Set in the stifling heat of summer over just a few weeks, the story follows the relationship between Rachel and her teenage daughter Mia after Mia’s friend goes missing. The story is clever, but it’s the heady, slightly claustrophobic feel of the novel that is particularly affecting for the reader. The characters seem barely able to breathe in the sticky heat, almost suffocating under the weight of lust, lies, envy and betrayal. The portrayal of the relationship between mother and daughter is excellent – almost painfully well-observed and one of the strongest elements of this novel. It’s as if the author has peeled away everything we see on the surface and got to the very heart of how this 40-year-old mother (technically middle-aged, I suppose) feels as she observes her teenage daughter emerging as a beautiful and sexy young woman. As the story unfolded, I really felt for Rachel, despite her flaws. We don’t always agree with her actions (and inactions) but they felt entirely believable for this character and what she was going through at this point in her life. This is a beautifully written, slightly dark, and atmospheric novel, and I recommend you read it in the sticky heat of high summer.
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