The Phantom Child by AJ Wills
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.
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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 Review
This was a quick read and a real page-turner with two major twists that – as they say – you won’t see coming. Well I didn’t anyway, especially the second one.
The story is told from Karina’s point of view, and it’s quite distressing at times. On holiday in Turkey with second husband Ronan and four-year-old Jacob, she wakes up on the first morning to discover that the boy is missing. Vanished, his clothes and toys gone, and his bed not slept in. But that’s only the beginning, because Ronan insists that they don’t have a son, and that Karina is delusional, with a history of mental illness.
Karina is a bit dim really isn’t she? So much investigation she could have done at the time or at least later. Even just finding out more about Ronan when he started gaslighting her. Looking him up on the internet would have told her a lot, especially when she starts to find his behaviour menacing. And she’s not always very nice is she? So judgemental about other parents. Criticising everything they do, saying she’d never do that. Sorry, but sometimes you just do to save your sanity.
That’s not to say I didn’t feel sympathy for her, of course I did, but she accepted it all rather too easily. She doesn’t seem to have any friends who would have seen her with Jacob who can confirm that he exists. Her mother has dementia and barely knows her, let alone Jacob, and her ex-husband is not exactly supportive, say no more.
Now I love an unreliable narrator, but this would really take it to the extreme if she doesn’t have a child at all. But does she? Well we won’t find out for a quite a long time. It’s an intricate plot, with some truly horrible characters and Karina is stuck in the middle.
The book is set in two timelines – we jump ahead ten years in part two – when Karina’s life starts to change. And it’s here that it moves at a cracking pace as secrets and lies are revealed.
Many thanks to @ZooloosBT for inviting me to be part of this blog tour.
About the Author
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.
AJ’s Links
Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/AuthorAJWills
Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/ajwills_author/
Twitter – https://twitter.com/adrianwills
Book Links
GoodReads – https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/202336685-the-phantom-child
Buy Links – https://mybook.to/phantomchild-zbt
