An excellent read that I really enjoyed. I was gripped by this story from the beginning.. I will be reading more books from this author as I enjoyed this one very much.

Blurb: A blur in the sky, a brick no, a trainer falls to the water... There seems to be a scuffle... a hand grabbing at the dangling child. Then, with the awfulness of inevitability, the hanging child drops, gravity takes him.

A child is killed after falling from the Humber Bridge. Despite fleeing the scene, two young brothers are found guilty and sent to prison. Upon their release they are granted one privilege only, their anonymity.

Probation officer Cate Austin is responsible for Humber Boy B's reintegration into society. But the general public's anger is steadily growing, and those around her are wondering if the secret of his identity is one he actually deserves to keep.

Cate's loyalty is challenged when she begins to discover the truth of the crime. She must ask herself if a child is capable of premeditated murder. Or is there a greater evil at play?

My thoughts: I have no idea why I’ve only just picked this one up! It sucked me right in and wouldn’t let go. I read a lot of thrillers but this is the first one I’ve read where the protagonist is a Probation Officer rather than a Detective of some kind – I really enjoyed the unique perspective of Cate and found it refreshing in such a popular genre. I found out after I’d finished it that Ruth Dugdall herself had worked as a Probation Officer which would explain how believable I found the story and the character interactions.

So, meet Cate Austin, whose dream was to be an artist. Instead, she is a single mum to ten year old Amelia and working with the most troubled of people in her professional life. Things aren’t great in her private life either – her dad and her sister disappeared years ago, her mother is an alcoholic and her husband has left and her and started a new family with another woman. At the beginning of this story, Cate is allocated to work with newly released Ben – otherwise known as Humber Boy B - the brother who has served the longest sentence for the murder of the child in the blurb.

Ben was ten when he was convicted and is now being released at the age of eighteen with a completely new identity. A lot has changed in the time he was imprisoned and he has no real experience of life outside bars. It’s Cate’s job to make the transition a little easier for him. Dugdall shifts viewpoints regularly so that we see events through Cate’s eyes but also through those of Humber Boy B himself. There are shifts in time too, so that as well as the current story, we flashback to the events leading up to and eventually including, that fateful day. Interspersed between chapters, are transcripts from a Facebook page set up by the mother of the boy who died who is trying to trace Ben on his release, simply to be given the chance to ask him why her son died.

Ben’s older brother Adam was also imprisoned for this crime for a much shorter time. He was the most important person in Ben’s childhood as his father figure was often absent and his mother, like Cate’s, is an alcoholic who once told her son that she didn’t love him. Still desperate for a mother’s love though, Ben can’t help but send his mum a card on his release and as a result, Adam and his girlfriend Cheryl, who was present on That Day, come to find him. It’s this that sets in motion the events which drive this story and seeks to answer the big question: What made a child kill a child?

I absolutely loved this story and it certainly kept me guessing. It turns out that there are another three books in this series which is GREAT NEWS! And, even better, this one is only 99p on kindle at the moment – grab yourself a bargain!

I would like to thank both Net Galley and Legends Press for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.