Published By: HQ
Pages: 432
Released On: 05/11/2026
When three-year-old Tippi Macklin goes missing on a weekend break with her parents, her face appears in newspapers around the world, sparking endless debate and conspiracy theories. Wealthy and glamorous Jed and Gabby never give up hope that ‘Little Tippi’ will be found.
Eighteen years later, a young woman arrives at their door claiming to be their lost girl. She has a new name, a new history and some startling evidence to support her claim. Can she really be Tippi – or is she an imposter?
A DNA test will prove her identity one way or the other, but when the results come back, it seems the mystery has only just begun…
*****
Thanks to NetGalley and HQ for the advanced copy of this title in return for an honest review.
This is a boo that needs to be read fresh, so I won’t go into too much detail because I don’t want to give anything away.
Shockingly, whilst I own another of her books, I’ve only read one of Louise’s books before this, which seems mad considering I would now think of her as a go-to thriller author.
This had me hooked from page one, I was immediately addicted.
Sadly this is a timely topic, children going missing. Luckily most are found and returned quickly but sadly there are too many that aren’t found. So it felt very familiar. And coming up to 20 years since Madeleine disappeared, it felt very timely and all the more poignant.
Luckily I have never been, and hope never to be, in the situation of losing a child, so I cannot say how realistic it was, but it definitely felt like it.
It’s well paced, totally gripping and addictive, and I couldn’t bear to put it down until I’d found out – was she Tippi or not?
Let me just say that the following is not a negative, even though it might read like it. But these kind of books, these thrillers, they have the build up, setting everything up, something happens, we then make our decisions before it all comes out in the end. But by about 20% of the way through it felt like we’d already got to the bit where I’d made my decision and wanted to know the outcome. So I was worried about how she’d keep it going for another few hundred pages, but boy did she! It’s very impressive. I still wasn’t sure I believed the outcome of the tests and whatnot (I won’t spoil what they say), so I was eager to see how it would end and if I would be right.
I got a little confused at times because whilst it’s mostly present prose, there are flashbacks, social media posts, and emails. So it took me a while to figure out, but that might have been the formatting in my e-arc. But the content was so enjoyable that it didn’t really matter.
I read it in a day it was so addictive. I have another of her books that I’ll definitely be moving up my tbr list.
