Sunday 16 July 2017

Review | Little Boy Found by LK Fox

Published by Quercus on July 6, 2017



Little Boy Found is an ebook-only publication written by LK Fox, which is the pseudonym for Christopher Fowler, author of the Bryant and May series. I must say I loved the look and sound of this novel from the moment I first heard about it, and I was dying to get my hands on a copy. This is one of the most intriguing books I have read in ages.

The book is told with two main characters. First there is Nick. Nick’s relationship with Ben has gone sour, but he still keeps a much better relationship with Ben’s son Gabriel. When Nick wakes up with a heavy hangover one morning, he rushes to do the school run but after dropping Gabriel off at school another car collides with his. The driver refuses to swap insurance details so Nick takes a photo of the licence plate only later to discover that there is a boy in the back of the car – and that boy is Gabriel.

The other main character is Ella. Ella is a teenage girl who has an obsession with a band and a particular person in that band, the lead singer, of course. A lot of teenage girls could probably relate to how desperate she is to meet her favourite band and how they consume her life. I know that when I was a teenager, music was a massive part of my life, and meeting bands was a highlight of my teenage years. But for Ella, things take a huge turn with massive consequences…

There’s no denying that both Nick and Ella are incredibly interesting characters with big stories to tell. Early on in the book it did feel like I was reading two different books at the same time because their stories felt alien to each other. I couldn’t see the connection. But things become clearer later on and the author well connects their stories together.

Character development is something I thought the author did really well. It is also something hard to talk about for spoilers sake, but I will say this was probably my favourite thing about the book – seeing how the characters change and are impacted by certain circumstances. I was definitely drawn, at first, to Nick’s side of the story a lot more than Ella’s, but soon the author had me obsessing over them both.

There were parts of this book I struggled with though. This book is billed to be unpredictable but yet once I worked out the connection between Nick and Ella, I found it anything but. I don’t necessarily mind when a book isn’t predictable but Little Boy Found was lacking in other things for me too. One thing I loved about the sound of this book was how it was a different take on a missing child story. This was a big reason why the book appealed to me so much, but despite this being a big mystery novel, it lacked believability, something which is a big thing to me when reading psychological novels. Why that genre appeals to me is because the books tend to mess with my mind a lot and leave me unable to think about anything else as the situations within are so plausible. Whilst this book did mess with my mind, it was in a completely different way as I spent a lot of time either trying to work out what was happening or trying to imagine any of it happening and I didn’t manage well at doing either of them.

Despite how I felt about many aspects of this book, I was still drawn to it and never even considered stopping until I had reached the end and found out what was going to happen to these characters. I found so many parts of this book fascinating and it is 100% a book you will feel the need to discuss with other readers as there are so many talking points. Sadly, though, I didn’t love this book like I wanted to.



2 comments:

  1. I am certainly intrigued enough to have just bought this book from amazon - I really want to know how the characters are connected!

    I look forward to reading this!

    Em @afternoonbooker

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Awesome - look forward to hearing what you think!

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