Martha a new mom hires her sister Becky as a nanny to take care of her 8 week old daughter Layla who suffers from health issues.With Martha and her husband out of town for work Becky is in charge of Layla for the night .The next morning though Becky calls emergency services because Layla stops breathing but evidence suggests that Layla died the evening before which leads to Becky’s arrest.Torn between the loss of her daughter and her love of her sister Martha does not know what to believe and is riddled with guilt and remorse.

No more questions is a gripping emotional read.Gillian Mcallister writing is even paced with a heartbreaking ending. A brilliant story that I found difficult to put down .4 ½ stars.

I would like to thank Penguin UK - Michael Joseph & NetGalley for providing an ARC of this book in exchange for my honest and fair review.

Absolutely brilliant. Very emotional and a hard subject to read but very worthwhile. This is about a one sister losing her child and the other sister being charged with the murder and then the courtroom drama surrounding it told through the eyes of all those involved from the sisters to their husbands and professionals. Their family are struggling to get through it and are divided. A shocking ending too. Great book. I will be reading more from this author.

We know from the start what’s happened here - Martha’s 8 week old baby girl Layla has been found dead in her cot whilst in the care of Martha’s sister Becky. We learn the events through the court case. I loved the way each testimony was written from the point of view of who was giving the evidence. Is Becky guilty of Layla’s murder? Was it a tragic accident?

I loved this book and read it in two days - lost sleep over it in fact. Highly recommended.

2 sisters who love each other but are both jealous of each others lives. A baby dies while in the care of her aunt, who is then accused of murder. The book follows the murder trial.
The book is well written and keeps you reading, but is an uncomfortable read. Would you want the murderer of your baby to be your sister?

Complex and difficult subject dealt with very well in this story.Characters who were hard to sympathize with at the beginning,this changed as the story moved on. Difficult and moving conclusion.

This is a good read, it didn’t grip me and once or twice I did wonder if I would finish it. But the story and the quality of the writing kept me interested and I wanted to know what had really happened.

Thank you to NetGalley for the chance to read this book in exchange for an honest review.

The book is a courtroom drama. The focus is on 2 sisters Becky and Martha. Martha went away on business leaving Becky in charge of 8-week-old Layla. The unthinkable happens, Layla dies and now Becky is on trial for her Murder. As the book progresses you hear evidence from several witnesses and experts and slowly we discover what happened that fateful night. The writing style is great I was hooked and I just wanted to keep reading to learn what happened to Layla so I had a couple of very late nights! The reveal is shocking and was worth the wait I will not say any more but I would recommend this book to others.

I loved the relationship between the sisters. It was so relateable.
Becky and Martha are sisters in the middle of a trial - but Becky is the accused and Martha the victim. Did Becky really kill Martha's child, her own niece?
The style of the story telling made it really easy to read. And I was pleased that Martha and Scott finally debate whether they were responsible parents - I did wish though that this had been explored more in the novel.
A gripping story.

This is the third book of Gillian McAllister that I have read and I think it is probably my favourite. Possibly because it is so close to home, being a mother, but also because the writing is just another notch higher than her usual high standards.
No word is unnecessarily used, the narrators, both sisters, have their own special voices , but between them is a potentially broken trust that has resulted in the death of a baby.
It was as gripping as the others by Gillian, but this,this completely took my breath away and I could not stop till it was done. She manages to take a 'whodunnit' mix it with a 'whydunnit' and ultimately not have the 'reveal' be as important as the lives of the characters are. Whether murder or accident, the consequences are life changing for everyone involved.
Thank you to the publishers and Netgalley for letting me read this in return for an honest review.

I am always fascinated by the way an author approaches a courtroom drama, which forms the core of this compelling book. Gillian McAllister uses the structure of the witnesses in the case, developing their often fleeting brushes with the accused into a gradually forming picture of what happened on the night of the death. She shows the interaction with the accused both through their thoughts at the time and through their testimony, watched and analysed by the agonised mother in the gallery. Flashbacks to the night of the death and even further back to explain the causes and mitigation to the event, help the reader understand the characters in greater depth and make their own judgements before the day of the verdict. A thoroughly absorbing, well-paced and satisfying psychological thriller, which kept me hooked to the very end.

A highly emotionally charged book about the day’s leading up to a mother losing her first child. If all the evidence points to the same verdict then it must be true right? Did Becky murder her niece? How does a family recover from that? Whose fault is it?

This novel follows the story Martha who entrusts her young baby to the care of her sister Becky. They are close, but very different characters as we see as the story unfolds. The main focus is the courtroom when Becky stands trial for the murder of her niece, but Martha's instincts tell her that Becky cannot be guilty. The suspense builds throughout as the evidence is given from the different perspectives of those involved. We witness the strain that both the death and the trial exerts on each person as loyalties are divided and each person has to face up to their own shortcomings. Martha feels that Becky is the only one who can know the truth, but the reader is kept guessing the outcome until final pages.
An excellent read which I recommend for anyone who enjoys suspense and intrigue.

No Further Questions is a tough read for any young parents as it follows events after the death of a baby girl with the mother's sister being the main suspect. The ensuing court case, and inevitable breakdown of family relarionships are narrated achingly sensitively with raw emotions evident as the facts of the case are gradually revealed through out the book. Who do we believe and who is to blame for this little girls death? Told in the present tense and from both sisters point of view we swing from pillar to post in an emotional rollercoaster. Two very different sisters are pitted against each other through the trial in this riveting novel. Well worth the read!

At 8 weeks old Layla is found dead in her cot, her mother is in Greece, her father is socialising and her Aunt/nanny is the prime suspect.
This book focuses on the trial with various flashbacks of the two main characters Becky and Martha telling their sides of the story. The story is a twist and turn making the reader believe one thing and then another.
I realised quite early on who the real culprit was and found it fascinating to see how it would come about and how they had done it.
I loved this book and would recommend it to anyone who loves a good crime thriller. Thanks for letting me read!

A stunning courtroom drama focusing on the trial Becky has been accused of murdering her sister Martha's baby, Layla. The police are convinced that she is guilty. She is adamant that she is not - though from the narrative we see her memory is a little hazy.

The author cleverly uses what is happening in the courtroom with a chapter about what happened at the time of what is being presented to the court and historic narrative about the relationship between the two sisters.
Interestingly neither of the sisters is a particularly likeable character, but this seems to add value to the story.

The story centres on Martha, her husband, Scott and Layla and, ot course, Becky, but there is also a wide cast of supporting characters who all contribute to this brilliantly written story, particularly the judge in the trial (and his dog, the aptly named Rumpole) and the expert witnesses.

The most interesting part of the book for me as the narrative developed was whether there could be an alternative scenario which no-one had seen - I leave it to other readers to see what they thought.

Thanks to Net Galley for the chance to review this book.

A really great read and what a sad story, I kind of guessed early on the out come but not the exact circumstances, but it didn't spoil the read, it was totally absorbing and kept me hooked until the last page, highly recommended

Told through a few narrative voices, we are thrown into a legal wrangle in which Becky has been accused of the most terrible crime: murdering an 8 week-old baby. Martha watches on and, although it is initially ambiguous you can see she hopes for proof of innocence so she can be free from losing both her baby and her sister. An engaging idea but the details of this plot make it captivating. I remember all too well the guilt of feeling bored during my maternity leave or angry as my tiny, helpless baby screamed his way through yet another consecutive night. I remember crying out words of frustration, so heartbreakingly echoed by the characters of this book. We are not invited to judge but to thank any and every god that no harm befell our loved ones at their most vulnerable. This is heartbreaking and captivating from beginning to end. The only slight niggle I had as I read was that there were hints a neat resolution was coming (I won’t comment on that idea at this point) and that real life trials would never allow grieving relatives with such a luxury. A thought to ponder on. A thoroughly recommended read (especially if you can resist skipping to the last pages, a sin I am guilty of sometimes, but to my relief, held off on with this novel).

This is a heart-rending tale of a small baby dying and the subsequent trial when the post-mortem shows that she could have been murdered.

Two sisters are divided here as one was baby-sitting for the other, and it was in her care that the baby died, and thus she is on trial.

Would you believe that your sister deliberately killed your baby?

This book tells the struggle of the mother as she sits through the trial and the evidence mounts against her sister.

The trial felt very real to me.

The questioning of the witnesses and the way small things were built up into an overwhelming case of guilty.

A book where you need to keep on reading to find out what the verdict was and does she admit what really happened? Or do we never find out?

I thought it well written, with the complex science of the pathology explained simply enough for the reader to understand and the conclusions that thus could be drawn.

What a page turner . Your sister is acccused of murdering your baby but what do you believe .
Another great read from this author with only half a star taken as I knew the ending before the ending 😜.. 4.5 stars and my thanks to the publisher and. Netgalley for my chance to read

I was hooked right from the start of No Further Questions by Gillian McAllister. It plunges straight into a trial as Martha sits in the courtroom listening to expert witnesses being questioned and cross-examined about the death of her baby, Layla, just eight weeks old. Her sister Becky is accused of murdering her. Becky was looking after Layla, a difficult baby who cries and screams endlessly, whilst Martha was away in Kos, organising a school for refugee children and her husband, Scott was away at a work conference. She found Layla dead in her cot and denies killing her. It looked like a cot death – until the postmortem showed otherwise – and the police are convinced it was murder.

This is a tense, tightly plotted book, narrated from several viewpoints, but mainly alternating between Martha and Becky, revealing their thoughts and emotions as they relate what had happened. Despite being very different characters with different lifestyles Martha and Becky love and trust each other – otherwise Martha would never have left Layla with Becky. Martha doesn’t want to believe Becky is guilty but as the trial proceeds, as medical and social worker witnesses as well as neighbours and a school teacher present their accounts it looks increasingly bad for Becky. And yet, and this shows how real this trial and these characters came over to me, I couldn’t believe she had done it either.

Despite being written in the present tense, I was gripped by this book. I didn’t want to stop reading it and when I wasn’t reading it I was thinking about it, about the characters and their relationships, about how they had got themselves into such a terrible situation. Gillian McAllister presents such a complex subject, with great insight into human nature, with characters that are not perfect (as none of us are) – they each have their flaws and make questionable decisions, so it is next to impossible to untangle the truth from supposition.

This is simply an excellent book, and it is without doubt one of the best books I’ve read this year.

Thank you to Gillian McAllister, the publishers and NetGalley for my copy of this book for review.