Anders de la Motte's first Seasons Quartet novel, Rites of Spring, is the best Scandi thriller I have read in ages, so this second standalone in the series, End of Summer, has been in my sights for months. As in the first book, the story is made up of two interconnected timelines. The first is set in the Summer of 1983, when four-year-old Billy Nilsson goes missing from his farm in the small rural town of Reftinge, and follows both the course of the police investigation into his disappearance, a...

SWEDISH REVIEW Slutet på Sommaren är en alldeles fantastisk bok! Jag måste erkänna att jag föll totalt för omslaget första gången jag såg boken och handlingsbeskrivningen gjorde mig verkligen sugen att läsa boken. I boken får vi får följa båda polisarbetet 1983 när Billy försvinner samt Billy's storasyster Veronicas egna sökande över svar tjugo år senare när hon under ett gruppterapisamtal träffar på en ung man som skulle kunna vara en kopia av Billy som stor. Veronica har aldrig riktigt komm

Missing Child Thriller set in SWEDENIt is 1983 and four year old Billy has gone missing. He didn’t come in for his tea when called… and is believed to have wandered into a crop field adjacent to his family garden in a village in rural Sweden. What happened to him there? Despite days of searching nothing was found (except one of his shoes in the field). Eventually the search stopped, and an uneasy calm descended. There were many rumours but never any facts to support them. Eventually the village

End of Summer unfolds in alternating chapters, moving between past and present – the summer of 1983 and the present day. For me this structure really worked as I was constantly wondering what was going to happen next in the other timeline, although later in the book, one of the timelines predominates. Throughout the book the author’s  ability to deliver a teasing last line adds to the suspense, as does the occasional inclusion of a series of letters from an undisclosed correspondent, the signifi...

Am I the only one who had a strong feeling that the book hasn't been written by Motte? 😃 I've read his books before and this one put me in doubts from the very first pages. Not to mention that I knew after less than 100 pages what happened with the boy (not in details but it wasn't hard to guess), I also found the storyline and characters too shallow for the author who is capable of so much more. Still I gave the book 3 stars for keeping me awake until 2 am.

This is my honest review of the international bestseller ‘The End of Summer’ by Anders de la Motte who is a best-selling Swedish author, which I won through a book club giveaway offer in return for leaving an honest review. The publisher is Zaffre.With the strap line ‘you can always go home, but you can never go back’. The novel moves between the summer of 1983 when four-year-old Billy chases a rabbit in the fields behind his house. But when his mother goes to call him in, Billy has disappeared....

This is the first book I have read by this author and it made me want to read more. It's a rather unusual tale of a boy's disappearance and its impact on a whole community, but most of all his close family, a police chief involved in the investigation, and the prime suspect. The main viewpoint character is the missing boy's now adult sister and her life is a mess - she drinks too much, has been in trouble for stalking an ex and is barely hanging on to her job as a grief counsellor. When she gets...

Summer of 1983, Billy is a 4 year old who is playing outside and when his mother shouts for him to come home, he doesn’t arrive. The hunt goes on to find missing Billy but he is never found. Present day, Veronica is a therapist with her own demons, she can’t let go of the past and move on from when Billy went missing. She starts to look into what really happened.The book follows two time lines, 1983 and present day to try and establish what happened to Billy. It’s an interesting read with strong...

This is one of those books that may end up being something very different from what you expected. I’ve read & enjoyed another series by this author & freely admit my own preconceptions got in the way.What we have is a story of domestic drama told in dual timelines by 2 MC’s. In the summer of 1983, a little boy named Billy went for a walk & was never seen again. Through the eyes of police chief Månsson, we follow the ensuing search & investigation that envelops the small town of Reftinge. In alte...

I hadn’t realised that End of Summer was part of a quartet of books until after I had read it. No matter, it is easily read as a stand-alone and now I have three other books to add to my TBR list.End of Summer is a dual timeline story, set in the present day and in the summer of 1983 when a small child, Billy, goes missing.First though we meet Veronica Lindh, a grief therapist who is taking a bereavement counselling group, under supervision. It is clear that this supervision is warranted. Veron

Raising my hands up now to say, this is one of the best books I've read in a long long time. I'm a huge fan of translated crime fiction and the translation of this Swedish story by Neil Smith is excellent, possibly some of the best translation I've ever read. It's a complex and incredibly intelligently written crime story that is told over two time lines. We have the present day where Veronica works as a bereavement counsellor. She does this as much for herself as for her clients. Her past was m...

End of The Summer by Anders de la Motte(The Seasons Quartet)You can always go home. But you can never go back...Summer 1983; Four year old Billy chases a rabbit in the fields behind his house. But when his mother goes to call him in, Billy has disappeared.Never to be seen again.Today, Veronica is a bereavement counsellor. She has ver fully come to terms with her mother's suicide after her brother Billy's disappearance. When a young man walks into her group, her looks familiar and talks about the...