The northwest region of New Zealand was replete with rough terrain and twisted, tangled tree roots. Even on foot it was almost impossible to navigate the rainforest. This setting was the backdrop for a taut domestic thriller, the mysterious vanishing of the Chamberlain family.

In April 1978, “the car containing the four sleeping children left the earth…the rain slick road had curved so treacherously…” propelling John and Julie Chamberlain and family between the tree trunks and into the rushing river. The torrential rain dissolved any skid marks holding clues to the accident.

Having left London behind, John accepted a job in Wellington. Why not take the family on an adventure to explore South Island before work commenced? Oldest child Katherine “fumbled for understanding as the freezing water gripped her and she gasped…That was the noise she’d been hearing all along. The car had crashed into a river.” Her brother Maurice’s badly injured leg was trapped. Little Tommy groaned but didn’t utter a word. It looked like Mum “must’ve already escaped. She’s climbed out and gone to get help.” The family had been in New Zealand for only five days!

After receiving a phone call from John's future place of business indicating that he had not arrived on schedule, Suzanne Barrett, Julie’s sister embarked upon the first of several trips from London to New Zealand to sort out what had happened to her sister Julie and her family.

Fast forward to 2010. Forensics had uncovered the remains of Maurice, the Chamberlain’s eldest son. His bones, along with his father’s watch and a tally stick, were discovered near the Tasman River. The notches in the tally stick told the story of some type of IOU. Since Maurice had a prior leg injury before the trip, a study of his bones indicated that he had lived until 1982, for four years after the accident. Did other family members survive as well? If so, where were they?

Just like Maurice’s aunt Suzanne Barrett, this reader was intent upon trying to unravel any and all possible traces of the Chamberlain family. The storyline was mainly recounted through two timelines; 1978-the disappearance and 2010-the discovery of Maurice’s remains. The search by Suzanne for additional information was emotionally taxing and palpable.

Ah…a rescuer! Herbs and poultices to treat the injuries…containment…terror…conformity…loss of connection. A devastating tale with resilient protagonists despite the hand they were dealt.
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An excellent, well written, unputdownable read.

Thank you World Editions and Net Galley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

5⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️


Barely 5 out of 5 . It started with an eye opener , I thought it would be a police sort of drama but it doesn’t . Reading it was make you hook as what will happen next . It has sort of drama with crawdads sings but barely .
Writing was great on this and doesn’t make you feel bored .

Due to a sudden, unexpected passing in the family a few years ago and another more recently and my subsequent (mental) health issues stemming from that, I was unable to download this book in time to review it before it was archived as I did not visit this site for several years after the bereavements. This meant I didn't read or venture onto netgalley for years as not only did it remind me of that person as they shared my passion for reading, but I also struggled to maintain interest in anything due to overwhelming depression. I was therefore unable to download this title in time and so I couldn't give a review as it wasn't successfully acquired before it was archived. The second issue that has happened with some of my other books is that I had them downloaded to one particular device and said device is now defunct, so I have no access to those books anymore, sadly.

This means I can't leave an accurate reflection of my feelings towards the book as I am unable to read it now and so I am leaving a message of explanation instead. I am now back to reading and reviewing full time as once considerable time had passed I have found that books have been helping me significantly in terms of my mindset and mental health - this was after having no interest in anything for quite a number of years after the passings. Anything requested and approved will be read and a review written and posted to Amazon (where I am a Hall of Famer & Top Reviewer), Goodreads (where I have several thousand friends and the same amount who follow my reviews) and Waterstones (or Barnes & Noble if the publisher is American based). Thank you for the opportunity and apologies for the inconvenience.

Overall this was an intriguing, well-paced, thrilling, duel-timeline novel. A really good time in the moment, just not so stand out among all the other thrillers out there. Still recommend this one to readers looking for a new thriller to pick up!

3.5 stars rounded up :)

This dual timeline psychological suspense/horror was a book that I couldn't stop flipping through and def propelled me toward the ending. I was expecting some twisted experiences and I wasn't disappointed in the slightest.

An English family who had emigrated to New Zealand disappear after only a few days during a storm. By the description I thought that this was going to be a good story especially after that beginning but sadly it wasn’t. Anything could have been used as a title really as there was very little mention of a tally stick. The very short chapters jumped all over the place and not many satisfactory answers to any of it. Sorry, didn’t enjoy this book at all!

The Chamberlain family - mom, dad and four children - are newly arrived in New Zealand from England where Dad is to start a new job. They decide to take a road trip and do some exploring before he starts his new job. On April 4, 1978 the family vanishes and "The Tally Stick" documents the ensuing story.

In order not to give anything more away, I'm going to be very brief. This story was intense, a bit dark and disturbing as well as very sad at times. Readers should be aware of many triggers including animal cruelty and child abuse. I realize this doesn't exactly sound like a glowing recommendation but I was very caught up in the story and liked it a great deal. With less than 300 pages and the fact that you just need to keep flipping those pages, it's a fairly quick read and I regret not getting to it sooner so that I could talk it up before publication. Just goes to show you can never tell!

I'll be keeping an eye out for anything this author writes in the future and will also be searching out some of his previous writing.

My thanks, as well as my apologies for missing the release date, to World Editions via Netgalley for the opportunity to read an advance copy of this novel. All opinions expressed are my own.

This book was released in January, but I’ve only just got round to it. Partly because I got behind on ARCs and also, I just kept putting it off. Yes, it sounded intriguing but other books I’d requested from World Editions had let me down. Once I finally got started, I really enjoyed reading The Tally Stick.

It’s not quite what the synopsis suggests: a family of six move to New Zealand from London for the father’s job and disappear without a trace. Years later, the skeleton of one of the children is found but why do the remains suggest that the boy died years after his disappearance?

Once you start the story you realise there is no mystery – there is really only one possible explanation. And the tally stick found with the body? It gives lends the book an intriguing title but really it was neither here nor there. I don’t want to call it predictable but as I’ve already mentioned, there weren’t many places for the story to go. I was frustrated by a detail in the ending (the author’s intention, surely) but everything else played out as I had imagined. However, all this is not to say that the story wasn’t compelling – it really was, and I read it quickly – just that the promised mystery is actually a sad story of survival and coming of age.

The time jumps around a little, but rather than cause confusion glimpses of the future served as a hook for the upcoming sections. There are some hard scenes, the opening accident only one of them, and some animal cruelty that while awful does help the plot.

Thank you NetGalley and World Editions for this ARC.

A page turner for sure! The writer gives you just enough to make you interested and wanting to keep reading to see what happens next! Loved this book even though it was grim reading at times.

A nice easy read with an unusual storyline, nothing like I’ve ever read before. I just had to keep reading to find out the outcome, which wasn’t what I was expecting!

Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for this ARC in return for an honest review.

The Tally Stick by Carl Nixon is not at all what I expected. A whole family goes missing in NZ and its not until decades later that one of the sons is found aged at least 5 years from when he disappeared. So where has he been, where is the rest of the family?

I really enjoyed this book, a lot more than I thought I would. I found the characters very engaging and believable and the story heartbreaking and beautiful at the same time.

I would recommend to anyone who loves a survival story!

A story of survival of the fittest in a way.
An indepth story of children and adults and their everyday intertwined lives.
Of hopes and dreams and harsh realities. It seemed to read like they lived in a past century with no electric or running water.
Especially like the character of the older woman survivalist and the girl.
Did not like the character of Peters a throughly disreputable character.
I enjoyed reading this book

An English family travelling in New Zealand have a car accident where the car disappears into a ravine that is heavily forested. Both parents and one child are killed. The other three children survive although two have severe injuries. Eventually they meet a man who says he will help them but in fact, with the help of another woman, the children are imprisoned on a run down farm in the wilderness and forced to work for their “freedom” which is where the tally stick comes in. How are the children ever going to escape from these hillbillies?

I was riveted from the start with this story and enjoyed it immensely until the end where I had trouble believing the choice the girl Katherine makes. Perhaps it would have worked if Katherine had been under three years of age when the accident happened but she wasn’t. She was around 10 and had been attending a private school in England. There is no way that a child with that privileged background and of that age would make the choice that she did in the end.

This is a book that I would give more than 5 stars. I was unexpectedly surprised at this unusual story that was written with such beautiful descriptions that made it feel as though you were with the characters and their feelings. It is hard to write without giving away some of the story, and I do not want to ruin it for other readers. I will just say it is worth the read, and one I won't soon forget! I really hope to read more by this author!

Lost in the wilderness: subjugation, survival, and the meaning of family
Up on the highway, the only evidence that the Chamberlains had ever been there was two smeared tire tracks in the mud leading into an almost undamaged screen of bushes and trees. No other cars passed that way until after dawn. By that time the tracks had been washed away by the heavy rain. After being in New Zealand for only five days, the English Chamberlain family had vanished into thin air. The date was 4 April 1978. In 2010 the remains of the eldest child are discovered in a remote part of the West Coast, showing he lived for four years after the family disappeared. Found alongside him are his father’s watch and what turns out to be a tally stick, a piece of scored wood marking items of debt. How had he survived and then died in such a way? Where is the rest of the family? And what is the meaning of the tally stick?

This is a brilliant read.
Wonderful well written plot and story line that had me engaged from the start.
Love the well fleshed out characters and found them believable.
Great suspense and found myself second guessing every thought I had continuously.
Can't wait to read what the author brings out next.
Recommend reading.

I was provided an ARC from NetGalley and the publisher. This is my own hone\st voluntary review.

I did not know what a "wild ride" I was in for when I read this book, pun intended. The Chamberlain family has come to the West Coast of New Zealand in 1978, after relocating from England for the father's job. They are exploring the West Coast on a short break before beginning their new life, when their car leaves the road after sliding on wet pavement. They careen through foliage, which closes after them as if they'd never been there. The next scenes are stunning as the children react to how their life has literally been turned upside down.

Meanwhile the storyline switches to 2010. The body of the eldest boy, Maurice, has been discovered at the bottom of a cliff. It appears he lived for four years after the initial disappearance. The aunt, the Mother's sister, had returned to New Zealand several times to search for the family and had been unable to accept their disappearance. Now the discovery of this body shows that at least one of the children did survive the initial disappearance.

Then we are back in 1978, as the children realize what a harsh situation they are in. I don't want to give away plot details, but I was keen to read and understand what happened to these children, and why did Maurice ultimately die? One of the most interesting parts of the book was how the three children reacted so differently to their circumstances. Is it better when dealt such a blow to fight or to accept?

I kept hoping for a happy outcome as one does when one grows attached to the characters in a story. If you've read any survival stories or child disappearance stories, the storyline the author lays out is quite possible and heartbreaking. I raced through this story, eager to see how the Chamberlain children would fare, and if their aunt would ever get her resolution to their disappearance.

Thank you to NetGalley, author Carl Nixon, and World Editions for allowing me to read this ARC in exchange for an honest review. I thoroughly enjoyed The Tally Stick and highly recommend it.

This powerful story opens with a car late in night careening off a sheer cliff in New Zealand, crashing through thick forest growth into a river way below, and killing Mom, Dad and infant sister of the British upper-class Chamberlain family who are touring the bush outback before settling into a new home in Wellington and Dad’s job for BP Petroleum.

Shell-shocked survivors comprise three siblings: Maurice the eldest who suffers a terrible leg wound, Katherine who emerges intact but disoriented, and youngest brother Tommy has taken a damaging hit to his head and has turned catatonic. Katherine and Maurice go into sheer survival mode. They’re stunned. They cannot find their way back to civilization amid the rugged terrain and their injuries. When rescue appears in the gruff and unkind form of a bushman and outback healer Martha, the children fall into line recognizing their need to have adults to take charge. Their survival, and lack of survival, stories drive this disturbing, dramatic narrative forward.

Years later, the skeleton of Maurice is found, clutching a Tally (debt) stick with innumerable notches in it. It turns out from dental records and bone growth that he died four years after the crash. Running Parallel is the story of their British Aunt’s repeated treks to New Zealand both right after the accident and after the discovery of Maurice’s body to try to ascertain what exactly happened.

This book hit a particularly close nerve with me- my English family had migrated to Wellington, New Zealand in the early 1900’s for a warmer weather cure for one brother’s tuberculosis. As a family, we were familiar with Maori lore and customs, and my Nana as she emigrated to America continued to share myriad New Zealand stories with us grandchildren. In 1974, in a big trip back from a visit the New Zealand family, both my parents perished in a Pan Am jet crash in Pago Pago. I was 12 and my younger brother 10. Nixon’s story is set in 1978, so the time tracks and ages of the kids run parallel.

Like the surviving children in this story, I found myself suddenly orphaned and thrown into a sense of unreality. As I read about the Chamberlain car crash and the surviving two children – here injured both physically but also deeply psychologically – I related to Nixon’s narrative. My younger brother and I got whisked away to a small town to live with an aunt and uncle under what proved to be for us uncompassionate circumstances, and like Katherine and Maurice we too mutely went along and felt stuck under emotional debt of them having taken us in. Taken from our friends, family, schools – it felt much like landing in the wilderness and just trying to stay alive.

It felt like we had two main options: all out rebellion or mostly conformity until an escape option presented – for us this was boarding school and college. In Nixon’s telling, the siblings completely split reactions: with Maurice embracing all out rebellion and focused singularly on escape, and Katherine molding herself into a “good girl” role for the new adults in her life. Where Martha demands they stay to help around the farm and repay their “debts” for having been taken in, Katherine eagerly gets to work while Maurice digs in his heels. While Katherine adapts and flourishes, celebrating nature and getting close to Martha, Maurice gets increasingly and harrowingly punished for his escapes.

What’s emerges is a profound and morality play about how people respond to tragedy, what it means to be emotionally indebted and how this creates a complex tangle in relationships, and what it means to survive a catastrophic event.

Thanks to Netgalley for an advanced reader’s copy.

The Tally Stick is difficult book to describe. It is about survival, New Zealand’s wildness, family bonds and a mystery that ties them all together.

I enjoyed the structure of jumping from year to year. It was so interesting to see how the aunt was looking for them in certain years compared to the events in other years. I don’t want to spoil any of the plot so I will end by saying that this is a well crafted story that blended survival and mystery in a seamless way.

I received an arc via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

The tally stick by Carl Nixon.
Up on the highway, the only evidence that the Chamberlains had ever been there was two smeared tire tracks in the mud leading into an almost undamaged screen of bushes and trees. No other cars passed that way until after dawn. By that time the tracks had been washed away by the heavy rain. After being in New Zealand for only five days, the English Chamberlain family had vanished into thin air. The date was 4 April 1978. In 2010 the remains of the eldest child are discovered in a remote part of the West Coast, showing he lived for four years after the family disappeared. Found alongside him are his father’s watch and what turns out to be a tally stick, a piece of scored wood marking items of debt. How had he survived and then died in such a way? Where is the rest of the family? And what is the meaning of the tally stick?
A good read. Well written story. 4*.

Kiwi author Carl Nixon’s latest book, The Tally Stick is promoted as a mystery thriller. The Chamberlains, an English family, vanishes in New Zealand in 1978, their tyre tracks washed away, leaving little evidence. When a child’s remains are discovered in 2010 on the rugged West Coast, the mystery deepens. How could the Chamberlain’s eldest son have lived for four years after disappearing and what is the significance of the tally stick? At its heart, this is a story of survival, moving across various time periods that aren’t in chronological order. An engaging tale with warm resilient characters, making it literature fiction with a four-star rating and a tribute to New Zealand with its west coast setting, immigrant settlers and Maori cultural references. With thanks to World Editions and the author, for an uncorrected advanced copy for review purposes. As always, the opinions herein are totally my own and freely given, without obligation.