The Heatwave by Katerina Diamond #bookreview #TheHeatwave #NetGalley

One summer. One stranger. One killer…
Two bad things happened that summer:
A stranger arrived. And the first girl disappeared.
In the wake of the crime that rocked her community, Felicity fled, knowing more than she let on.
But sixteen years later, her new life is shattered by the news that a second girl has gone missing in her hometown.
Now Felicity must go back, to face the truth about what happened all those years ago.
Only she holds the answers – and they’re more shocking than anyone could imagine.
The heatwave is back. And so is the killer.

💛💛💛💛.5

Hi and welcome to my review of The Heatwave!

I know there’s a bit of a contradictio in terminis going on on my little blog, ‘cause I keep telling everyone who will listen that I’m on a NetGalley ban, yet I keep posting NetGally ARC reviews. I have SUCH a good reason though: books from authors I love keep popping up and I cannot walk away from that, I am not made of steel!

So today I have another review of a book by one of my auto-buy authors, namely Katerina Diamond. Back in 2016 I read Ms Diamond’s debut novel The Teacher and I knew I had a winner on my hands. I haven’t looked back since, Imogen Grey and Adrian Miles – the protagonists of her police procedural series – are two of my favourite people and every time a new Katerina Diamond novel comes out, I’m there to snap it up! Book by book, I have witnessed how much both the author and her characters have grown, and each new book is an absolute treat.

The Heatwave is not a new instalment of that series I love so much, it is Ms Diamond’s first standalone novel and I was fully prepared to miss Miley and Imogen, but before long I was entirely caught up in The Heatwave and there was no time nor space to miss anything or anyone.

The Heatwave goes back and forth between now and then. The past storyline is told from the POV of Jasmine, a teenage girl with a best friend and a bit of a teenage crush, who is about to grow up a whole faster than she bargained for. During a very hot summer, one of Jasmine’s classmates goes missing, forever casting a shadow on their picture-perfect little seaside town. The present storyline is told from the POV of Felicity, who grew up in said town, and fled it. But now, sixteen years later, she has to go back, because another girl has gone missing and she might be the only one who can help. Going back, however, means facing up to what happened sixteen years ago…

The Heatwave starts out as a bit of a slow-burner, building up the tension. One thing is crystal clear from the start: there’s a plethora of juicy secrets to unravel! Both storylines are absolutely shrouded in mystery, not just the missing girls, if anything they melt a little into the background, but also Jasmine and her suspicions and Felicity who is obviously hiding something, or multiple things even, and I couldn’t help but wonder just how reliable a narrator she really is.

I had an inkling about one secret. At times I felt it was blatantly obvious, other times Ms Diamond deftly made me question not only my gut feeling but everything else with it. She made me wait for it, that’s for sure, but in the end I was proven right and it was all I could do not to punch the air and scream HA I KNEW IT from the top of my lungs. Funny how sometimes seeing a reveal coming is a total kill-joy and other times it makes you feel triumphant and on top of the world, only adding to your enjoyment. Having said this, there were many other reveals I had not seen coming AT ALL, one rendering me positively speechless (translation: I was totally blubbing like a goldfish again 😂).

The Heatwave is the perfect summer thriller to read by the pool this summer, or on a pebbly beach, or by the pond like I did, or in case of another lockdown, in your bathtub, wherever you read it is absolutely fine ‘cause odds are you’ll end up forgetting all about your surroundings anyway! Recommended!

The Heatwave is out on 25 June, pre-order now from Amazon!

Huge thanks to Avon and NetGalley for the eARC! All opinions are my own.