This is just absolutely one fabulous story. I stayed up all night & didn't sleep the next day, because I just couldn't put it down
loved every page!

Although I can honestly say that I found it hard to put this book down, it baffled me a lot. It seemed to be a book of two halves. Initially we are introduced to Cara who has raided the family savings and booked herself into a luxury Spa resort in Arizona. From the first page this part of the story was very chic lit, with lots of backhanded, sarcastic comments from the main character, which made the book appear quite shallow. I did wonder if there was a dark, hidden plot beneath this where Cara had in fact killed her husband and two children, or something had happened to them and she was escaping, but once she received replies from the children on social mediea then this theory went out of the window, unless someone was impersonating them. We are then led into a very complex, and to be honest, brilliant storyline based around the supposed murder of Melody Chappa. Sadly some of the characters seemed as plastic as the resort staff but nevertheless the complexity of who could have murdered Melody and the possibility of her actually being still alive had the capacity to be a winner. If the book had simply based everything around this without the Stepford Wives staff and police force then I would have enjoyed it a lot more. There was no need for Cara to be escaping her family, it didn't really have a place in the actual plot, but nevertheless I did enjoy reading it although it had a very shallow feel to it as I mentioned before, which it could have avoided. Without this it would have been a lot stronger.

When I read the synopsis of did you see melody I was intrigued enough to request it from netgalley, the premise is a lady has runaway from home to a fancy resort in Arizona, without telling her family where she has gone. When she arrives, exhausted and late at night the receptionist sends her by mistake to a room already occupied by someone else, A man and a girl, the following day when she's looking around the resort she hears another old lady. Saying she's seen Melody but no one believes her, it turns out Melody is a young girl who was murdered by her parents. The idea was good, but I didn't like the way the story kept referencing back to transcripts from chatshows, it began to read like a play rather than a novel, but on the whole the story was good enough to make me read to the end.

This book was quite good, and I liked the idea which is clever, but I found the inserts from the trial etc a little long winded.

I would be very interested if there was a follow up to this book.

Brilliant book. Enjoyed it from start to finish. It asks more questions than it answers. I like the ending of the book. Were people right to hide Melody? How much of her book was the truth? The excerpts of Melody's book throughout add to the drama and our feelings for Melody. But are the readers feelings manipulated rightly or wrongly? I would definitely recommend this book and will probably read it again which is something I rarely do with a book.

2 stars.

I struggled with this book really. It started very slow, the first 30% was a description of a spa basically. The main character Cara had run away from her family for what seemed like such a trivial reason, using life savings just to punish her family??!

Then a weird mid section of transcripts from a tv show and another annoying character Juno. Swiftly followed by a totally implausible Tarin the florist come police officer??!

Plus numerous other characters to confuse the reader in what was probably an attempt to write in some twists. The overall writing style changed about 3 times throughout the book and I just felt it didn't quite click.

The end has a twist in the sense of who the main guilty party is but again it was so implausible I almost laughed.

Not for me sorry.

I enjoyed this book and think it will make a good holiday read. I wouldn't class it as a psychological thriller at all, more chick lit meets scooby doo. That said, the book is well written and entertaining.

Sorry, my kind of book at all. Gave up on reading a quarter of the way through

This is my first time reading anything by Sophie Hannah, I know she has been writing new Agatha Christie's novels, but I haven't summoned the courage to read them yet.

However Did you See Melody? was a great book. It was a little slow to start with but once it got going I was hooked and couldn't put it down.

Cara has arrived in the States, heading to at a 5 star spa called the Swallowtail Resort in Arizona, she is running away from her husband and 2 kids back in England to clear her head and thing for a few weeks. After her long journey and getting lost on her way to the resort, when she finally arrives to her room in her sleepy state she discovers someone else is already in there! She catches a glimpse of a young girl and man who she presumes is her father. After apologies are made she hightails it to reception to advise of the mistake only to be met with a very flustered and over-apologetic receptionist who practically bursts into tears over the mix up.

The next day whilst in the reception she overhears someone mention the name Melody Chapa who is insistent that she is staying at the resort, after some digging Cara find out that Melody is dead and her parents are in jail for her murder. But Cara is convinced it was Melody she saw in the hotel room the night she arrived....

Set in a relaxing sun soaked place this would make a great beach read, there is a good mix of humour coming through in the form of Cara and Tarin, a fellow guest at the resort. I didn't really foresee the ending of this story, which was great and the execution of the cast of characters involved were well done.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book, and cant wait to read more of Sophie Hannah's books.

This was a fist Sophie Hannah book for me so i didn't know what to expect. The setting is Arizona, and I went there with Cara Burrows. I traveled around the 5 star luxury resort, that is Swallowtail, felt the heat and craved a cocktail. I'm not going to give the plot away on this one but I will say that I expected an entirely different book than the book I read. You start with some family difficulties and your set up for a family saga, but then it transforms entirely. A mystery unfolds with good elements of who dun-nit and a dose of threat. Some of the characters are highly annoying but in a believable way. I'm not sure this book would have worked if the characters were all likeable. What struck me the most was the combination of humour and thriller/mystery. It's a hard combination to pull off and it works here, it keeps the book light whilst compelling you forward.
Perfect read for long and lazy summer days by the pool.

This was a book built on an interesting premise - the unusual interplay of family dynamics and feeling after the stillbirth if a child, and the relationship of the parents with the subsequent sibling living in the shadow of the " perfect angel baby "- with a little added piquancy that the girls were so close in age they couldn't have both lived, as the second would never had been conceived at the time they were, had the first survived.
So, excellent idea for a book. The plot that results has so much promise. You certainly want to read to the end, no question. However the rollercoaster ride has many twists that are never explored and so many characters that deserve more attention. A large chunk of the plot unwinds via the medium of an American tv show chaired by a judge investigating cases. It's rather irritating to be honest , however there is a reason it's there revealed right at the end.p, in a slightly too tidy wind up to the tale.
Did I enjoy it ? Yes I did though I was also a little frustrated. It could have been so much better !

I have read many of Sophie Hannah's books and this one had the same problem for me as her others. The premise is wonderful! But somehow, Hannah doesn't quite make it work. I've rated it as a 4 star because despite that, Reading it was easy and for the most part, enjoyable so I didn't stop reading but there were two major issues.
1) the language. Has the author watched no American Tv? Never visited the country? The American characters in the book all use British slang, idioms and language. As someone who grew up in the USA, I found it constantly jarring.
2) The ending. The last few pages had they been developed onwould have salvaged it and had me raving about it but it was only a few pages and we aren't sure whether what discussed is true or not.
There are far too many leaps of faith that you need to take in order to accept that the plots main occurrences happened in the first place and even bigger leaps in order to accept how it was all untangled in the end.
Characterisation was good in places. I loved Tarrin and Cara but some others
I felt that were lost in the maelstrom of Bonnie and her over the top persona that didn't ring true. Heidi the in-character who nearly did something, then didn't, then could have at the end, but didn't..... Zellie who felt totally one dimensional and Hayley who should have been included in a scene of her own rather than just hearsay.
A good book but not one I'd buy a copy of.

A modern day Agatha Christie with humour. Sophie Hannah is a great writer and I enjoyed this book as much as previous books. Definitely highly recommended.

This is an unusual plot centred around a stay in a five star spa resort in Arizona and the discovery of the truth about a cold case.
Overall the book did not engage me, I found the characters of Cara, Melody, and especially Juno very unsympathetic and hard to relate to.
I was struggling to finish the book, but have to admit that I did not suspect the person who was actually guilty of the crime, so that was a very effective twist, and the ending of the novel is quite chilling. Perhaps a sequel is planned?
This is the first novel I have read by this author, and I will be interested to read more of her work. I am sure that fans of her novels will thoroughly enjoy this book.
Thanks to Netgalley and Hodder & Stoughton for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

My first Sophie Hannah book and I wasn't sure what to expect really but I thoroughly enjoyed this story. What I thought was starting off as a tale of domestic life breaking down as Cara abandons her family and jets off to stay in a swanky spa, soon developed into an intriguing mystery surrounding 'Melody' - the girl who had been missing for years and whose parents had been tried and sentenced for her murder. Cara soon gets dragged into an amateur plot to uncover what happened, with the dangerous consequences for herself. Though some aspects of the unfolding story stretched the limits of plausibility; and I didn't really care much for Cara's domestic story-line; the characters are well-written; likeable and play their parts in this story well.

Quite an enjoyable read but I have to admit I struggled with quite a few of the characters. I found Cara to be quite irritating and Bonnie Juno and Tarin just set my teeth on edge.
The story itself was an interesting one, taking the murder of a young girl to protect her from abusive parents but for me personally it didn't quite hit the spot.

This is the first time I had the pleasure of indulging in a Sophie Hannah novel, Did you see Melody was a brilliant piece of fiction.
Drawing the reader in and turning everything upside down so the reader doesn't know her up from down, or left from right.
It was brilliantly executed, a tale expertly woven to intertwine multiple strings and bind them together to make perfect sense.
We have Cara Burrows an English lady currently trying to get away from what she conceives her family to be, totally selfish.
Catching a plane and heading off to this glorious Five-star resort. Cara is thrust headfirst into a bizarre set of circumstances that leave her floundering for the truth and the answer to the question did she see Melody?
I loved the way we had a story on top of a story, as in Cara trying to forget her own problems by concentrating on the enigma that is Melody's story.
The tongue in cheek humour was awfully amusing and I found myself chuckling quietly to myself.
There was also a great variety of interesting secondary characters that I loved.
Did you see Melody was definitely an engrossing page turner and I read this book very swiftly.
As for the ending, well not going to give it away, so let's just say I loved the twist.
So in conclusion, fantastic bit of fiction, a real thought provoking read that begs the question, right or wrong how far would you go if you believed you were doing the right thing for someone you love.
So pleased to have received a free e-copy of Did You See Melody and this is my own honest opinion.

Don't you just hate it when, at the end of a story, someone gets saved at the very last minute, not to say second? I do, I find scenes like these mostly ridiculous, but most thrillers are like that. Thankfully, not this book by Sophie Hannah.

I am not revealing anything regarding the plot, because - believe me - there are plenty twists and turns in Did You See Melody to keep you reading. And then you get to that last page and the book still manages to take your breath away. Amazing. A-ma-zing.

Thanks to Netgally and the publisher for a copy of the book.

Best-selling novelist Sophie Hannah has come up with another cracking psychological thriller with Did You See Melody?
Angry and upset with her husband and children, Cara Burrows needs space to think and plan her life. So she runs away from her family in England, heads to the US and books herself in to a five star resort in Arizona.
Except instead of finding herself, it seems she has found someone else... a girl presumed murdered by her parents seven years previously.
With plenty of twists and turns, it's certainly a page-turner as the mystery deepens and Cara finds herself in danger of never seeing her family again.

This book starts with Cara, pushed beyond her limits abandoning her family and fleeing to a luxury resort in America. On arrival at the receptionist makes a mistake and gives her a room already taken. Cara accepts this mistake as it gets her upgraded to a different part of the hotel. However as it turns out the girl is the room may be Melody, the most famous murder victim in the county with her parents serving prison sentences for her murder. Without relieving too much more I can say this book kept me hooked from the moment I started right through to the end as I was intrigued by Cara's back story and also was the girl Melody. Kept me guessing right to the (satisfying) end.

I am a massive Sophie Hannah fan and this book is up there with her others for the level of believability and "real" characters.

Thanks to NetGalley for the chance to read this