I had mixed feelings about The Widow, Fiona Barton's best-selling debut and once again my thoughts are all over the place, but this time on her second mystery novel, The Child. I must admit I was rather curious about this second book and I started it as soon as it got published. It seems that I'm unable to highly appreciate Barton's literature. I think that her books are too slow-paced for my taste. It is true that she provides you with a great insight into her characters lives and their ways of thinking, but at some point a great amount of details makes the reading experience a little boring. As was the case with The Widow, while reading The Child I had the impression that I was dealing with a well-written mystery which unfortunately lacked that certain spark I was able to find in other books in this genre I have read throughout the years. Theme-wise, Barton opted again for a children and motherhood-related novel and due to this I could notice some similarities with her previous book. I think that I would've been more content if she had chosen a totally different plot. From my point of view, she played it safe. What I'm going to say it might be surprising for some of you who have already read this book but I wasn't necessarily impressed with the twist in the end. I supposed that (view spoiler)[Emma might be related to Angela (hide spoiler)]. The Child is told from multiple points of view, a narrative structure you encounter in The Widow as well and in the majority of today's books in the psychological/ mystery/ suspense/ thriller genre. I didn't particularly like Angela, the woman whose baby daughter was taken under mysterious circumstances from the hospital soon after she was born. I thought she was a rather bland character. The same cannot be said about Kate (the journalist who was also present in the The Widow), Emma (a depressive young woman) and Emma's mother, Jude, who appeared to me, from the first pages, as interesting and complex characters. Moreover, Emma and Jude were also very unreliable. 
 That being said, I am not sure whether this book deserves 3 or 4 stars and Goodreads doesn't allow you to give scores such as 3.5. Overall, The Child was slightly better than its predecessor and I think it is worth a try. I hope that Fiona Barton will choose different themes in her following novels because I really expect an evolution in this regard. I'm quite interested in reading her next releases.