Where Do Dead Birds Go?

by Paula Clamp

A young adult thriller, where school pastoral care takes on a whole new meaning.
Kelly Bradley and her mother, Pamela, are starting a new life in the North. Both are hoping that what they’ve left behind will stay there. On arrival, Kelly is immediately drawn to the warmth and welcome she receives from the local school. This support becomes even more important when outsiders, Kelly and Pamela, become entangled in frightening world of retribution. Who can they turn to when they no longer have each other?

188 pages, Kindle Edition

Published December 7, 2019

About the author

Paula Clamp is an award-winning, bestselling novelist, writing adult and young adult fiction. She also writes for theatre and screen. She lives in Belfast, Northern Ireland.

Reviews

[Connie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I downloaded this book via Kindle Unlimited.

I follow the author of this book on instagram, and it has been a personal goal of mine to read more authors from my country, and Paula Clamp is, so I was immediately interested in this book. It was very much a whodunit situation. Following the death of Jake Roberts, a well known and well liked local counsellor, his policeman brother Kyle is hell bent on finding out who was responsible, refusing to believe that he killed himself. But when his trail leads him to Kelly, a new kid in town with problematic and erratic parents, who left a nightclub with Jake the night he died, he may find out more than he ever imagined. Kelly, just trying to survive this new town and this 'fresh beginning' not only has Jake's death loomed over her life, but her mothers health is seemingly becoming more and more odd and her father's presence is more present than she'd like. This is a book where everything is connected, even the littlest details, and I love that.

This book was well written, realistic and it flowed very well. At first, I didn't really know what to expect but it was quickly left for me to realise that nothing in this book is as it seems. Kyle was probably one of the more interesting characters in this book, at first, I hated him. I thought he was creepy and over the top, but he really was a product of his environment. His thought processes were really sad in a way, and ultimately this book kept me in suspense until the very end. When it seemed like the mystery had been solved, it really hadn't. It was only beginning. A total M Night twist towards the end.

[A.N. Willis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kelly and her mum arrive in a new town, both hoping to escape their pasts. On a fateful night out, Kelly leaves a nightclub with the wrong sort of man—and he winds up dead. But Kelly has no idea what happened. Soon the dead man’s brother—a police officer—is asking questions, and her new friends seem to know more about the death than they should. The more Kelly tries to find the truth, the more she’s unsure of who’s to blame. Because the person she should truly fear is the one she least suspects.

I wasn't quite sure what to expect with this book, especially in the first few chapters. But I was really engaged by the writing style and the voice--it's told in multiple points of view, with multiple unreliable narrators. The story really gets going when the dead body is found, and Kelly is afraid she'll be blamed. She starts trying to figure out what really happened. I love how the author parses out the information so we start to figure things out, only to twist things around a few chapters later. Slowly, the atmosphere becomes ever more dark and paranoid. I really had no idea what was going on until towards the end. I definitely enjoyed this strange and compelling ride!

[Jordi · Rating 5 out of 5]

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. For me, the sign of a good piece of fiction is when you can't put the book down - this book was like that. From the very beginning I was hooked into the story, and remained hooked through all the twists and turns. One of the best aspects of the book, was how, as a reader, we got to view the story from different character perspectives, without getting muddled as to whose narrative we were reading. A definite must read!

[Bianca Duthie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this story. The short snappy chapters and different perspectives really kept the storyline moving along nicely. Sometimes you can get bogged down in long chapters but this didn't happen at all.
Some minor spelling errors as is to be expected in a self published book.
Not what I was expecting from the book title but I'm glad I read it and hope there is a sequel.

[Nannette Kreitzman · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good read!

Where Do Dead Birds Go? is a unsettling story of victims who aren’t innocent and villains who turn a blind eye to their own iniquity. Clamp cunningly blurs the line between good and evil. I especially liked how she did not spoon feed every detail of the ending, crafting it in such a way as to allow her readers the fun of piecing it together themselves.