Next of Kin

I have a lengthy list of authors that my friends rave about that I’ve not read yet. I’m happy to say that Kia Abdullah is no longer on it, and I can see why so many have sung her praises!

In a book with shades of a Shakespearean tragedy clothed in a courtroom drama/mystery, we see the fallout between two sisters, Leila and Yasmin Syed and their husbands Will and Andrew, when a tragic accident claims the life of Yasmin and Andrew’s three-year old son Max.

Or was it an accident? Those prosecuting Leila say it wasn’t.

One morning Leila gets a last minute call from her brother-in-law Andrew asking if she can take Max to school so he can deal with an unexpected work crisis. Always the willing aunt, she agrees to take him there on her way to work. While driving, she receives another urgent call from her assistant: Leila is the only one who can retrieve the copy of blueprints her partner in their architecture firm needs for a high profile client presentation he’s about to give. It could change the whole future of their company and they’ve worked tirelessly to get here.

A few hours after averting her work crisis, Leila gets a panicked call from Andrew: Max didn’t show up for preschool. Where is he? And with that, her world crumbles.

I’m sure most of us have heard at least one tragic news story about a young child who died after being forgotten in the backseat of a car on a hot day. With a change in routine and the chaos of a given moment, these tragedies sadly happen. 

Here’s the wrinkle: the prosecution says that Leila intentionally chose to leave Max in the car - that she chose her work over her young nephew’s life. In reality, after being unable to conceive her own children, she’s poured a great deal of love and attention into this boy. What is the truth?

That’s the premise, but this story goes so much deeper. What seems to be a straightforward scenario at first has layers and hidden truths that with each reveal turned my whole understanding on its head. Even the parts that I suspected from early on weren’t entirely accurate by the story’s end. 

What I most appreciated though, was that nothing in this story felt implausible. There’s always some stretching of reality in these types of books, but there was no puzzle piece here where I said “that couldn’t happen”, which is so refreshing!

An excellent first introduction to Kia Abdullah, I’ll definitely be looking at her backlist and her upcoming book What Happens in the Dark. This is smart, engaging writing, hits all the right emotional notes and left me genuinely aching for all the parties involved in this story. The end was gutting!

This was an immersion read with my owned Kindle copy and the borrowed audio narrated nicely by Tania Rodrigues and Avita Jay. I highly recommend both!

★★★★ ½