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‘Barkworth is excruciatingly good… An impressive first book’ OBSERVER
A COSMOPOLITAN BEST BOOKS OF SUMMER 2020 pick
HEAT
magazine’s READ OF THE WEEK – ‘the evocative one’
‘I wanted to stay within its pages forever’ CLARE MACKINTOSH



This summer burns with secrets…

It is too hot to sleep. To work. To be questioned time and again by the police.

At the beginning of a stifling, sultry summer, everything shifts irrevocably when Lily doesn’t come home one afternoon.

Rachel is Lily’s teacher. Her daughter Mia is Lily’s best friend. The girls are fifteen – almost women, still children.

As Rachel becomes increasingly fixated on Lily’s absence, she finds herself breaking fragile trusts and confronting impossible choices she never thought she’d face.

It wasn’t supposed to happen like this.

Intoxicating and compulsive, Heatstroke is a darkly gripping, thought-provoking novel of crossed boundaries, power and betrayal, that plays with expectations at every turn.

FOR FANS OF ZOE HELLER, EMMA CLINE, EXPECTATION AND MY DARK VANESSA.



‘Stylish and sensual’ KIRAN MILLWOOD HARGRAVE

‘A summer sizzler… with twists, turns and revelations in all the right places’ EVENING STANDARD

‘What to read next IF YOU LOVED THREE WOMEN by Lisa Taddeo’ WHISTLES newsletter

‘A thrilling look at mothers and daughters, adolescence, sex, suburbia and secrets’ NELL FRIZZELL

‘Sexy, sensual, difficult, provocative…definitely one of the best reads of the summer’ LAURA JANE WILLIAMS

‘Pulls you into its sweaty interior and keeps you gripped’ RENEE KNIGHT

‘I couldn’t tear myself away’ ERIN KELLY

‘I am addicted!… A gripping, dark and twisty read with beautiful, poetic writing’ EMMA GANNON

‘Compulsive, sticky and full of gorgeous writing’ KIRSTIN INNES

‘A scorching tale of obsession, betrayal and the wounds that mothers and daughters inflict on each other’ TAMMY COHEN

What's Inside

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Reviews

Kiran Millwood Hargrave
Stylish and sensual
Renée Knight
Pulls you into its sweaty interior and keeps you gripped to the end. Darkly atmospheric and so well written
Erin Kelly
Raw, unsparing and almost unbearably tender. Perfect sentences swim gracefully across every page, overlaying a narrative that delights in wrong-footing the readers' assumptions. I couldn't tear myself away
Tammy Cohen
A scorching tale of obsession, betrayal and the wounds that mothers and daughters inflict on each other in the name of love
Clare Mackintosh
Painfully real, and so beautifully written I wanted to stay within its pages forever. Heatstroke is unsettling, challenging and utterly immersive
Nell Frizzell
Tense, sultry, unsettling, sweaty and evocative . . . A thrilling look at mothers and daughters, adolescence, sex, suburbia and secrets
Laura Jane Williams
Sexy, sensual, difficult, provocative - I was hooked for every twist, turn and revelation. This is definitely one of the best reads of the summer. I was blown away
Kirstin Innes
I gulped this whole thing down in one sitting. It's compulsive, sticky and full of gorgeous writing
Jane Healey, author of The Animals at Lockwood Manor
Fevered and claustrophobic
Woman & Home
An atmospheric read that will draw you into its tangled web
Red
Dark and unsettling
Cosmopolitan
A sultry, stifling debut
Emma Gannon
I am addicted!... A gripping, dark and twisty read with beautiful, poetic writing
Observer
Barkworth is excruciatingly good at encapsulating that point in life where Mia and Lily stand - on the edge of growing up... Intense and claustrophobic, this is an impressive first book
Heat
Gripping and intensely atmospheric... beautifully explores the complicated relationship between mothers and teenage daughters... you won't want to put this down
Evening Standard
A summer sizzler... with twists, turns and revelations in all the right places...This is Barkworth's first novel and she's hit the format out of the park
Daily Mail
Barkworth has a pinsharp eye for detail...it's propulsive, thought-provoking and atmospheric
Mail on Sunday
A bold and beautifully written novel of desire and danger
Best
Read if you liked Big Little Lies... A torrid, tense story about forbidden passions, played out over one steamy summer