Kia Abdullah - Next of Kin

ON AN ORDINARY WORKING DAY…
Leila Syed receives a call that cleaves her life in two. Her brother-in-law’s voice is filled with panic.
He’s at his son’s nursery to pick up Max. But he isn’t there.
YOUR WORST NIGHTMARE…
Leila was supposed to drop Max off that morning. But she forgot.
Racing to the carpark, she grasps the horror of what she has done. Max has been locked in her car for three hours on the hottest day of the year.
IS ABOUT TO COME TRUE…
But she’s too late.
What follows is an explosive, high-profile trial, that will tear the family apart. But as the case progresses it becomes clear there’s more to this incident than meets the eye…

Comment: This author got on my radar two years ago, when I read Whiskey in the Jar's review of this book. I decided I would try it too and now, at last, I've managed to do so.

Leila is a successful woman and she has a great life, even though she and her husband Will have not been able to have children. Despite this, it's with love that she has helped her younger sister Yasmin and her husband Andrew to care for their child Max many times, and why she accepts to take Max to his school one morning, after Andrew calls her. However, on the way, she receives a stressful call from her assistant and rushes to her work, managing to solve a crisis. After a few hours of work, Andrew calls her to ask where is Max, since the school reported he didn't go. Leila can't think but she rushes to her car and Max is there, still inside and still, in a very hot day...

What happens next is something no one would want and the terrible tragedy fuels a trial which will affect the family completely, but... could it be that Leila isn't telling the truth?

This book starts with a punch to the gut, but one that is more common that that. Doing some research does prove that there are more cases of people leaving young children in cars than what One would imagine, but when it comes to hot days, the danger is a lot higher for obvious reasons. Real life cases have certainly propelled mrs Abdullah to write this story and from the start we are given the idea that it was a mistake, a terrible accident due to Leila's forgetfulness, but the police  - and a future trial - will try to prove she did it on purpose.

I was engrossed with this story from the start, thinking that the thriller or mystery part of this story, mentioned in labels and blurbs would be related to the courtroom drama (one of my favorite parts and which led me to seek more books that might have this element) and the doubt on whether Leila was guilty or not. It turns out there are more layers to this story than what it seems at first, and I kept being curious the more I read. Since this is the first book I try by the author, I had no expectations on the writing style, but it certainly grabbed me.

The plot starts with a bag, that's for certain, and a lot of the story is focused on what happened and how this affects everyone. It was a little strange how Leila reacted, a little stoically in fact, but as the plot progresses, it's established she has that personality and we are given the hint that at some point she will feel the full impact of Max's death and how this affects her emotional state. From a psychological POV, this is something inevitable and I remained in suspense waiting for this happen...

The story is divided into three parts: the setting up of things and how the tragedy develops, then the trial period while a jury decides Leila's culpability, and the final part after we know the decision. All sections are captivating to read and in part I would say is due to the writing style, direct and without ramblings. However, if there is an issue I kept noticing is how sometimes the transitions between scenes weren't always smoothly done. If the goal of this was to not allow the reader to dwell too much on things so the new information felt more of a surprise, fine, but it also meant some new things came out of nowhere and instead of always being a good reveal, they felt unfair, after all there would be no way for the reader to ever make that connection.

This was even more obvious in the final part, when some twists happen one after the other... there are at least three moments in which we think something, and then it's not that, and then, not that either... what a genius tactic, but also a little too shocking, a way to really surprise the reader. While I see the validity of this choice, it also disappointed me a little because it kind of switches what had been established before and it's almost as if the reader was being taken for granted, there's no way for the reader to make those associations since the characters had been established a certain way.

Nevertheless, shock value it did offer, and makes the very final scene even stronger, (in my opinion), although the direct writing style did convey a certain aloofness to the description of these final twists. It was great and at the same time said in a very undramatic way. Despite my personal preferences, this was still a great story, very well done. I feel curious to read something else by the author.

Grade: 8/10