Overall Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

“Two children went into the sea. Only one came out alive.”

Oh my god. Wow. Wow wow wow wow wow. I’ve read one same comment in loads of other reviews for this book, but I’m going to repeat it anyway because it’s the truth. How on EARTH is this book a debut?! I’m sat in awe reminiscing over the tense, addictive journey I’ve just had from reading After The Storm. You’ve probably seen this about on bookstagram and all I can say is the hype is REAL. This is a true book of the year contender and I am so thrilled to be sharing my review for G.D. Wright’s masterpiece of a debut!

About the book

Introducing Sergeant Mike Adams and DS Sue Willmott, Beachbrook’s best investigators.

When local couple Andrew and Sophie take their daughter and her friend to the beach on a stormy day, they are momentarily distracted leading both children to get washed out to sea. Andrew dives in, but comes back ashore with only one child – his own daughter, Maria. Joe, the son of his best friend and local police officer, Chris, has drowned. But it was just a tragic accident…wasn’t it?

As Sergeant Mike Adams and DS Sue Willmott investigate what really happened in the water that afternoon, the ripple effects of the tragedy start to tear the community apart. The detectives must discover the truth before their colleague – bereaved and desperate father, Chris – takes the investigation into his own hands…

The beginning

If you read the prologue without needing to take a breather straight after, then who even are you?! God, those first few pages managed to steal the breath from my lungs and had my eyes glazed with the onset of tears. Every parent’s worst nightmare. Even though I don’t have children, I found it so easy to resonate with how a parent would feel, seeing their child thrashing around in the water, being consumed by wave after wave. Completely and utterly heartbreaking. This book actually has a content warning too which is an absolute rarity in a book, and this book certainly needed it right from the start. I’d love to see a warning like this being the norm in books! The author’s writing style and tone was everything I love and getting acquainted with all these characters felt so natural. They had a kind of familiarity to them, like I’d already known them for a lifetime. You can tell the author is a dad by the way he writes his characters, and I think this was a factor in why I felt so attached to them and their relationships. So bloody good!

“The town lived and breathed as if she was alive. She was beautiful, her vistas and horizons postcard perfect. Her perfume was vinegar from the chippy and sugar-dusted doughnuts. She played a melody of seagulls squawking and excited children running on her golden sands while, behind them, the drum of the breaking waves thumped just like a beating heart.”

Andrew and Sophie are parents to little Maria and also have a baby on the way. They often look after Joe, the child of close friends Chris and Linda. They have demanding jobs, so having Andrew and Sophie to help was a godsend. After the prologue which is set thirty-five years previously, it’s clear why Andrew is nervous around the water, why he’s so protective over Maria and Joe as they play on the beach. Wouldn’t anyone be after experiencing that? The book alternates between multiple POVs which gave the book so much depth. Andrew and Sophie’s perspectives, as well as Chris and Linda’s were all so strong, placing you in the shoes of loving, desperate parents whose children are their heart and soul. There’s no waiting around here – we’re plunged into a horrific accident at sea, with history almost repeating itself for Andrew. It’s such a devastating event, the descriptions, the tension written with such emotion and power. I didn’t expect to be tearing up so soon, but this was heavy. And it was only the start.

The middle

After Andrew manages to save his daughter from the waves, but fails to save his best friend’s son, not only was I completely devastated, but I also had the impression that there was more to this incident. Much more. We also begin to follow DS Sue Willmott, who, alongside Sergeant Mike Adams, is investigating exactly what happened during the storm. Seeing the events unfold from all angles felt fantastic, and even though there were a lot of character perspectives to follow, it felt easy to keep on top of them all. It was so neatly organised and brilliantly plotted. The author tackles grief delicately and with such attention to detail. His words perfectly encapsulate feelings of loss and hopelessness, yet also make you fiercely determined to find answers alongside Sue and Mike. It seemed Andrew wasn’t being entirely truthful with the police, and Sue was determined to get to the bottom of it. She needed to know exactly what happened. Joe should not have died that day. Was there something amiss?

“He had a daughter to shield. He had a family to look after. And now, he had a lie to protect.”

If you thought the devastating scenes were over and out of the way, then BUCKLE UP friends ’cause it’s gonna get worse! My heart once again shattered into a thousand pieces, the grief, the loss, the sadness completely floored me for a second time. Of course, the author writes this next blow with as much skill and feeling as the first. You can’t help but put yourself in the shoes of a number of characters to understand just how all this impacted them. So much would change now, and I wasn’t sure how anyone would overcome the trauma. I was also very intrigued by some new found evidence from the case, and the more I read from DS Sue Willmott’s perspective, the more I loved her. Everything she did was for that little boy. She’d made a promise, a promise to do everything she could to find out exactly what happened in the water. Things felt tense and unnerving at this point, almost setting us up to expect the unexpected. I love not having a clue what will come next in the book, and at this point, I wasn’t disappointed!

The end

The pace changed when part four began; there was an urgency, a bigger kind of suspense and an impending sense of doom and despair that seemed to loom after each chapter, getting bigger, more pronounced. It was pulse-quickening and unpredictable. I began to worry about the mental state of some characters, about what actions they would take to get justice for everything that had been taken away. There was so much happening, things that you wouldn’t wish on your worst enemy. The skill of getting so many feelings across to a reader, from intense sadness to fiery rage can’t be easy to write, but G.D. Wright absolutely nails it. I felt in awe of this so many times throughout reading and I’m not surprised readers are completely in love with this book. There are subtle hints that make us realise that all hasn’t been resolved. That there is still one crucial bit of information left to discover that will make us understand exactly what happened during the storm.

“It had been a Godsend, a job sent from the heavens. How was he to know that it had been the Grim Reaper’s work after all?”

The ending chapters became dark, but oh how brilliantly they were written. We see a man overcome with the weight of immense grief, slowly losing himself through an unhealthy obsession, his mental state in tatters. It was disturbing and hard to stomach at times and I had so much sympathy, but at the same time, there needed to be an end to all this. My heart was broken for so many reasons, the tension still lingering until the final few moments. I felt so emotional throughout all this time, but that was nothing compared to how the epilogue made me feel; it completely broke me in two. I ended the book full of a new found gratitude for life and its small pleasures. I feel like it has genuinely changed me in some weird way! What an incredible read. Absolute PERFECTION. (Don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t cry) If you love a crime drama and you’re looking for an extremely talented new voice in the genre, listen to all the BRILLIANT reviews for this book and just buy it!

Overall thoughts

After The Storm is one of those books you’ll never, ever forget. I adored every single word of it. It will break your heart and have you thinking about it in every waking moment. It has the biggest and best crime drama vibes including a thrilling mystery, impeccable pacing and brilliantly solid characters to suspect and to question. But it is also intertwined with an emotional family drama. It changed me. It had me thinking about my priorities and makes you look at life in a whole new light. It makes you think hard about the impacts of grief and how it can wreak havoc on a person, destroying who they were. All this on top of being such an addictive, compelling story as a whole. G.D. Wright will be an unstoppable force after this, I just know it! An emotional, gripping and all-consuming read. One of the best books I’ve ever read. I hope you love it too!

HUGE thanks to G.D. Wright for my copy of the book through your giveaway! You can grab your own copy of After The Storm right now through Amazon or wherever you buy your books. Make sure you’re following the author on Twitter/X and Instagram for more updates!

Looking for book reviews?

If you’re in need of reviews for your own book, do get in touch to get on my submissions list! All the information you need is on my book reviews page. If you enjoyed this review and would like to support my blog, you can buy me a coffee 😊