A really thought provoking who did it that kept me engrossed from the start to the end, whilst still leaving me wanting to know more. Great read.

Sophie Hannah has written a wonderful book that is a compulsive read. Every few pages the story line seems to change direction, giving the reader new possibilities to consider. The biggest question has to be is Melody alive or dead. The sadness that a child, only conceived because her sister died, was constantly reminded and the implication given that she would be next. Cara as the person that is the mainstay to this story, develops from a person lacking confidence to a very strong woman. The description of the area in Arizona is so detailed and accurate that it is easy to feel the sense of the awe inspiring spa centre, even the description of the casita is well documented. I loved the other American people who interacted with Cara, often making her feel awkward with their outgoing behaviour but who were essential to the story. The story appears to come to an end with everything resolved and out in the open, the resolution of which was totally out of the blue as the author gave no real hints to make the deduction. The last couple of pages leaves the reader with yet more questions to ponder and make their own mind up. I would normally say that to leave the reader up in the air at the end is not good but this has been done so well that it adds to the story line. Highly recommend this book especially for readers who like to try to pit against an author and discover who did what early on in the story

Did you see Melody?

Meet Cara Burrows, troubled British tourist who arrives at a luxury 5 star spa resort in Arizona USA expecting a break from family life. However, peace and tranquility is not what she ends up escaping to, as upon arrival she is given a room that is already occupied by a man and young girl.

What follows for Cara is a trip filled with danger, as she seems to have unwittingly found a teenage girl called Melody Chappa who was believed to have been murdered by her parents some years before. Melody Chappa is a household name in America and the murder case was infamous throughout the country with millions of the public having an opinion of what happened to seven-year-old Melody who disappeared without a trace.

Can Cara solve the mystery of the missing girl and settle the score to the country who believed that the parents where responsible for her fate?

This is the first of Sophie Hannah’s novels that I have read and it did not disappoint. I did find in the beginning that the main character Cara had some deep troubling secret that she was trying to escape from. However, it turned out not to be anything sinister as I was imagining but that she was pregnant and had not the best reaction from her family.

The strength of the main character Cara develops throughout the story. Originally she starts off troubled and broken from her ordeal at home and eventually dominating the story in her quest to escape her kidnapper.

An excellent ending leaves you thinking there is more to the story than already discovered, could there be a follow up to this story??

A story I couldn't get into,farfetched and not very believable.

When I got my hands on this book I'm afraid it leapfrogged my 30-book-high to-be-read pile and I started on it immediately. I devoured it within 2 days! 2 days in which I was supposed to be doing other stuff, but I couldn't put it down.

The first half of the book is told from the point of view of Cara Burrows, an English woman running away from the (fairly minor) problem in her life. I can't tell you more about that, other than Cara wouldn't have a problem if she just learned to communicate with her family (husband and two children). When she asks for their opinion, and gets an answer she doesn't want, rather than plead her case she takes a chunk of money out of the family savings and heads off to a luxury spa in Arizona in retaliation. Although she does not tell her family where she is going, she does give them the date she plans to return - and then constantly checks their social media to see if they're missing her.

Cara arrives at The Swallowtail resort in Arizona full of self-righteous indignation, and completely disorientated from her flight. So when she picks up her key and goes into her room, it takes a moment for it to dawn on her that the room is already occupied by a father and his teenage daughter. Instead of quickly leaving Cara hides in the bathroom, making the situation worse, hearing them wake up and begin talking to each other - and discussing the person hiding in their bathroom ...

Later, when everything has been sorted out, it dawns on Cara that the man's 'daughter' may have been Melody Chapa, the most famous 'missing' child in America - her parents are currently in prison, suspected of her murder. But did Cara really see Melody, or imagine the whole thing?

I found Cara incredibly irritating but vastly entertaining - she comes up with some great one-liners towards the end of the book. I loved her friend Tarin, the 'Badass Mom', a florist who fancies herself as a sleuth. Tarin's relationship with her stroppy daughter is also entertaining, in an Eddy/Saffy (Absolutely Fabulous) kind of way. It's Tarin who perseveres with the 'is she/isn't she Melody' investigation (when Cara wishes Tarin would let the whole matter drop) and gets the police to take the case more seriously.

There is a lot of backstory, which I wasn't so keen on, telling the history of Melody's disappearance, the police investigation and the trials of the people suspected of murdering her. Some of this backstory is told in articles Cara reads online, some is told through transcripts of a TV show. The transcripts I found harder to concentrate on (they'd work better in a TV/film adaptation). I'm afraid I ended up skipping some because I wanted to get back to the story happening in the present. I wouldn't recommend doing this though, because I missed a fairly vital clue!

Overall, I really did enjoy this book. Sophie Hannah is a brilliant writer and there were lots of genuine twists I didn't see coming. Several times I thought I'd worked everything out, only to be thrown by another twist - particularly at the end. I'd recommend this book to anyone who likes well-written mysteries, lots of twists, psychological suspense that's a little bit different, and stories with eccentric characters.

Sophie Hannah is, as far as I'm concerned, one of those authors that most people have heard of. She's written an impressive number of books, and has even picked up her pen to continue Agatha Christie's work - being described as "genuinely Christie's heir". But I have to confess, I'd never read any of her work until Did You See Melody? came up on Netgalley. That will have to be rectified.

Cara is from Hertford, England, which, coincidentally, is where I currently live. But (sadly), Did You See Melody? isn't set in Hertford. Cara jets off to the US, away from her husband and children, for a couple of weeks at a five star resort. She's carrying a secret, a burden, and needs time away from those she loves. She has a decision to make. But instead of the relaxing, mind-clearing break she was hoping for, Cara finds herself mixed up in a long-running mystery - what really happened to Melody Chapa?

Melody's case had been big in the US. Full of twists and half-truths, her parents were eventually convicted of her murder, despite her body never being found. The sightings of Melody were usually ignored, but there's something sinister about her case. As Cara gets dragged deeper into the past, she's scared that she'll never see her future - uncertain as it was when she stepped off the plane. But did she really see Melody?

Did You See Melody? is absolutely full of twists and turns, and will leave you wondering whether there's still more to Melody's story.

I received this book as an early read from NetGalley. The story is original and involves a woman, Cara, running away from her home situation in the UK and finding herself caught up in the remnants of a murder mystery which appeared to have been solved around ten years ago, although a body had never been found. The mystery continues and draws her in, in the meantime Cara's own dilemmas are revealed and she tries to deal with those too. There are some very good descriptions of the 5 star hotel in Arizona she has chosen to escape to and the characters that she meets there. There are times when the unexpected happens, but suffice to say all is well in the end. The story is quite original and was an easy light read for when I was on holiday.

I’ve read a few thrillers this year, which is pretty excellent actually because I love a good thriller. I really actually do. I think I say this every time I come to review one, like, there’s some weird part of me that feels like a can’t possibly write a review unless I’ve made it absolutely clear that DO YOU KNOW I REALLY LIKE THRILLERS AND I WISH I READ MORE OF THEM. What’s that about. Anyway, whatever, it is what it is and like every other time it segues (oooh good use of ‘segue’) nicely into this little chat about Sophie Hannah’s Did You See Melody which I read over the Easter weekend on my great Easter readathon. Hush. I know it was only 3 books and I care not a jot. I am totally calling it a readathon and thou shalt not raineth on my readthon-esque parade.

Anyhow. The book.
Sophie Hannah, if you didn’t know, has written lots of books. Lots. So many of the books. Including the new Poirot books which I haven’t read and don’t know if I actually will because my Agatha Christie loving heart just might not let me. Have I ever talked about my Poirot love? I have a lot of it and yet I’ve never ever read a Miss Marple. Strange, huh? Poirot, also, is one of the bestest things to ever be adapted for television and the ultimate hangover cure. Fact. But we’re not here to talk about old Hercule and I am endlessly sorry that I am so very easily distracted. Back on track, back on track.
Thing is, is that the fact that Sophie Hannah wrote these books with full permission of Agatha’s estate etc tells you a thing or two about her don’t you think? I mean Poirot. She got permission to write Poirot and whilst I sometimes look at The Monogram Murders (there’s another one too: Closed Casket) and think that I’m not sure I want to read it, the fact that Hannah is the person that wrote it is what drew me to reading Did You See Melody curled up on my sofa with an Easter Egg (Mini Eggs, if you wondered) and a cup of coffee. Yes I did dip the egg in the coffee don’t judge me.
It’s about a British woman – Cara - who for a reason we’re not party to at first, has upped and left her husband and two children and checked herself into a 5* spa in Arizona. There’s an old lady stopping there who everyone thinks is batty who keeps claiming she’s seen this little girl, Melody, who disappeared years ago. Except, Melody’s parents are in prison for her murder, so it can’t have been her, can it? Cara is not so sure.
And you know, it was ok. It really was. I gave it 3 stars which is good. I mean sure I wished I’d liked it more, but hey, life isn’t like that is it; they can’t all be 5 star BEST BOOK EVER can they?! And this book, it was good. The story I mostly liked; the characters I liked less; some of the narrative bugged me, but overall, I flew through it which, well that can’t be a bad thing can it. Nobody ever devoured a book they didn’t like. Except maybe some people did/do and that’s ok but I am not that person. I am a person that slowly puts down and backs away from the books she doesn’t like, not the kind that stops up late reading them and Jesus stop with the waffling Josephine.
Let’s talk about it a little: I’m waffling because I didn’t love it, that’s why. I don’t like not being able to wax lyrical about how amazing it is because I feel bad so I hide behind random chatter and hope nobody notices. Classic avoidance. Anyway.
It started off like a stereotypical beach read, which is fine, but not really my thing and there was a lot of fancy holiday spa description which did not give me holiday envy at all and was actually a little boring. A lot of the story was told via transcripts from a television show and those parts jarred for me and really messed with my whole reading experience partly because it because it didn’t flow and it was a bit weird and partly because the tv show host, well, I just didn’t like her, and all of those parts just seemed a bit…contrived. I can categorically state actually that I would have liked this book a whole lot more if it weren’t for those particular bits, which is a shame. Also the police were unrealistically incompetent and other people – like the tv show host and a (amusing but also annoying) guest at the spa – were far too involved in the investigation and generally it just….annoyed me. I spent a lot of the book not warming to anybody at all and thinking NO THAT WOULD NOT HAPPEN.
BUT THEN IT GOT GOOD. Like, in the last third this book pretty much did a complete u-turn and yes ok the things that bugged me totally still bugged me but the story really got going and I got a little bit hooked and then it ended and I did a small amount of swearing because, well, let’s say that it ended in such a way that Iif there were a sequel I wouldn’t be surprised. I’m pretty sure there won’t be; I’m confident this is a standalone book, but still, holy clever ending Batman. I liked that. The story ends and you think you know all of the answers – some surprising and some not so much – and yet, and yet, here it is: a surprise last minute chilling twist. I AM SO HERE FOR THAT.


Basically, this book was ok, it was a quick and easy read and the ending was good and even though things about it bugged the actual life out of me, I still think I kinda liked it.

I truly love this book, it had me hooked from the first page. There were so many twists and turns which made me gasp out loud. I will be reading this again.

Having read several other Sophie Hannah's book, I was very much looking forward to reading this. I like her style and her books never fail to be page turners. But unfortunately, this one just fell flat.

Cara Burrows has travelled from England to a five-star luxury resort in Arizona. Things immediately go wrong for her. She planned to spend her time thinking (even setting aside one of her rooms in her bonus villa as a "thinking room") but rather than thinking about herself, she finds herself playing private detective. The readers are taken along for the investigation, and there are twists and turns aplenty. (No spoilers here.)

As you would expect from Hannah, the book is very well written, but it's just not compelling. I didn't care enough about Melody's mystery to want to read all of the back stories and media coverage about it. Given that the back story about Melody's mystery took up much of the book, there wasn't much for me to enjoy. It definitely wasn't a page turner for me. Instead, it started to feel a bit like homework: something I had to get done.

Even though I was disappointed, I definitely will read another Sophie Hannah mystery. This one just fell flat.

I would like to thank Netgalley and Hodder & Stoughton for an advance copy of Did You See Melody.

The plot centred around a stay in a five star spa resort in Arizona and the discovery of the truth about a cold case.
I didn't really like the characters and some were pretty unnecessary but it does have a lot of twists and turns and would be something I would recommend to others.

I’ve read several of Sophie Hannah’s Spelling books, and felt that she’d recently lost her touch, but this book was a revelation.
There is still a mystery at the heart of it, but there is also a lot of good humour, and a savage deconstruction of American “Trial by Television”.
Cara has run away from her husband and teenage children and spent a lot of their life savings on a stay at a five-star American spa resort.
Due to an error at check-in, she is sent to the wrong room, where she sees a child, Melody, who is supposed to have died seven years ago, and whose parents are in prison for her murder.
Cara starts to read about the case, and part of the book is descriptions of statements, and television shows where the Melody story unfolds.
As Cara becomes more intrigued, she becomes involved with, Tarin, and her daughter Zellie, , also some policemen, an eccentric old lady ,a truly horrific TV host, and her husband also arrives on the scene.
As it becomes clear that all is not as it seems, she finds herself in danger, and has to find the inner strength to escape.
Although the book could be classed as a light read, I found the end very thought-provoking, and hope that Melody’s future will be better than her past.

Thanks to Netgalley and Hodder and Stoughton for the opportunity to read this book.

I thought that this book was back to the style of writing of Sophie Hannah's first books, which I thoroughly enjoyed. Her recent books, which other readers have given good reviews for. have not been to my reading taste. So I was,pleasantly surprised to find this book so enthralling.
The writing was very clear and the plot multi-layered and cleverly structured. I was drawn in from the start. I am usually quite good at guessing the ending but there were quite a few twists and turns and secrets to be uncovered, some harder to predict than others.
I would recommend this book as a great holiday read as you won't want to read just a few chapters a night, you will want to read it all in one day!!
Thanks to Net Galley and Hodder and Stoughton for the opportunity of reading and reviewing this book.

Cara has just found out she's pregnant but her husband and two young children do not seem to be very supportive. She decides to escape for a break at a luxury spar in the US splurging a good chunk of their savings. She arrives exhausted and is inadvertently shown to the wrong room which is already occuped by two people, she assumes are father and daughter.
Events move at a good pace and it is clear that Cara has become involved in something far more serious than she ever imagined. The girl in the room seems to be a child who was murdered by her parents some years before and events escalate out of her control whilst she tries to make sense of what is happening.
I found the plot was fast paced and tense. An original story line made for interesting reading and a book I didn't want to put down.

I need this book to be released so I can talk to people about it! I loved the twists and the characters were very beliveable.

Cara arrives in America after running away from a situation at home. She checks into a plush spa and accidentally walks into the wrong room, which is occupied by a man and a teenager. The next day whilst settling in Cara overhears another guest talking about Melody, a girl who was murdered 7 years ago and whose parents are in prision for her murder. Her interest is piqued and after researching the case realises that the girl in the room could have been Melody.

The book is clever in the way that when Cara watches videos about the trial you read the transcripts. The characters were great, all believable and well written, from Tarin the confident florist who isn't afraid to say what everyone is thinking to Bonnie the TV show host who is very passionate about the case.

I loved the little asides such as Cara being shocked at the health warnings on American TV advertising medicines.

Unconvincing….

Cara Burrows is pregnant with her third child. The problem is that the two older children are just that – much older. Neither her husband Patrick nor her two existing kids are totally enthusiastic about the new arrival so she decides to run away for a while. In fact, she decides to run from the UK to Arizona to a 5 star resort, spending a third of their life savings on a two week break plus luxury car hire. At the resort, she believes she sees the Melody of the title and so the fun starts. Except for me it didn’t….

The story is a slow burner. Unfortunately, it is such a slow-burner that it almost fizzles out and the first third of the book nearly lost me as a reader as I was yearning for some action but it (twice) sent me to sleep. There are many reasons why I cannot whole-heartedly recommend this novel but as is often the case it is not possible to be specific without introducing spoilers.

On the positive side the writing is excellent and the main characters are well drawn. However, the downsides outweigh the positive aspects by a pretty hefty margin. There are huge chunks of the book taken up by verbatim conversations from a TV chat show which actually added very little to the reader’s understanding of the plot. There were also too many unanswered questions, not least of which was the ending which it seemed to me was contrived to add a degree of uncertainty rather like the cliff-hanger at the end of each episode of TV soaps.

Coincidence plays a huge part in the story and most are just not credible. I will suspend belief when reading; but not to this extent. Never did I feel I was drawn into the plot. More often I felt like exclaiming “but that would just never happen”. There were times when there was so much detail it was like wading through treacle but there were other times which left me screaming for more information.

In short, it’s a story which is perfectly adequate as poolside reading but I was expecting more from an author who is described as a bestselling psychological crime writer.

mr zorg

Breakaway Reviewers received a copy of the book to review.

I liked the idea behind this book and the whole storyline sounded my cup of tea. I did struggle with it slightly as it seemed to drag on a bit too much and went into too much detail that I felt was unnecessary. Overall a good read though

I didn't read the back of the book before starting, I just went to my NetGalley books which have been neglected and picked one. Boy oh boy, what a doozy of a pick. It was my first Sophie Hannah book, it won't be my last. If I were in a bookstore now and saw one of her books I would buy it without any thought. Why? Because she is a such a good storyteller. Her talented way of building the story up with the perfect pace and suspense, when you think you have it figured out she just laughs at you and throws in another road that you never saw coming. This book will keep you up at night, make you late for work, you might even miss your train stop. A terrific mystery thriller with more turns and twists than the Pepsi roller coaster at Blackpool (wait is that still there?).

The characters are individually memorable, they each have their own unique identities all flawed in some way, as all humans are. The are all colourful, none are beige and blending wall flowers. They all have a purpose and a strong voice.

I don't have any negative points, the pace was good, I had no parts I had to skim. I loved the television show dialogue it was a great way to get the important required information to the reader in a very cleverly thought out format.

I loved this book! Cara travels from England to a luxury resort to spend sometime thinking about her family situation and marriage. Cara finds herself looking into the murder case of a girl called Melody. I love the portrayal of the American justice system played out on TV. You, alongside Cara, start coming to your own conclusions about what happened to Melody and who is guilty.
I love the characters including the larger than life Bonnie Juno!
I have not read Sophie Hannah before but would definately read another book by her.

I really don't rate this book. It just seems so far fetched and I didn't really care about the main character. I hate to be so negative it's just not my idea of a good book.