The Fire Child
By S.K. Tremayne
ISBN-13: 978-1478947387
Brought to you by OBS reviewer Omar
Summary: 
The chilling new psychological thriller by S. K. Tremayne, author of the Sunday Times No. 1 bestseller, THE ICE TWINS.
When Rachel marries dark, handsome David, everything seems to fall into place. Swept from single life in London to the beautiful Carnhallow House in Cornwall, she gains wealth, love, and an affectionate stepson, Jamie.
But then Jamie’s behaviour changes, and Rachel’s perfect life begins to unravel. He makes disturbing predictions, claiming to be haunted by the spectre of his late mother – David’s previous wife. Is this Jamie’s way of punishing Rachel, or is he far more traumatized than she thought?
As Rachel starts digging into the past, she begins to grow suspicious of her husband. Why is he so reluctant to discuss Jamie’s outbursts? And what exactly happened to cause his ex-wife’s untimely death, less than two years ago? As summer slips away and December looms, Rachel begins to fear there might be truth in Jamie’s words:
‘You will be dead by Christmas.’
Review:
The Fire Child starts with Rachel arriving to Carnhallow in the summer and having a good time with her husband and new stepson, Jamie. The summer ends and with it the brightest of her newlywed life. She tries to learn all she needs to know about the state, and the remodeling that her husband’s late wife was doing in hopes of making the place more habitable and restore the family name. In the dark and lonely house that is Carnhallow, while her new husband David is away all week in London for work, Rachel spends some time with David’s mother Juliet, who is starting to show signs of Alzheimer. Not being able to accept and process his mother’s death, Jamie starts to act differently and to say strange things to Rachel. Jamie claims that his mother is not dead, and she will soon come back.
A shadow starts to grow over Rachel’s new life, and her past that was once buried comes back to hunt her. Jamie becomes harder to handle and his predictions start to occur. At the same time, David starts to realize that his most important secret is starting to be even harder to hide, as Rachel decides to look into the death of his first wife.
I like mystery thriller stories and the Fire Child is a story I will consider mystery. I liked how since the beginning of the story, it starts to give hints that something is not right with all the characters and that they are hiding something. In this case, the secrets become more visible with the use of two POV for Rachel and David. While Rachel might be oblivious to information and facts, David tries to hide the truth from her, but lets the reader know a little bit of those secrets.
While the story had a good start, I didn’t like the character of Rachel. It wasn’t her past, but instead she started to become dull and annoying with her constant show of low self-esteem, and thinking everything that she did was wrong. She would have been a good character, if she would have had shown the strength that let her deal with the things that happened to her growing up.
The first part of the book was good, but some way around the middle the story-line started to become confusing. While the ending and loose ties were explained at the end by one character, I still found it odd how Rachel put every piece together so fast and how things go so out of control.
I liked the psychological turn the story took and how fast the characters turn on each other. It’s fun to read a mystery story that combines psychological aspects into the story-line.
If you are a fan of S.K. Tremayne work, then I recommend you The Fire Child. In this story, a new family tries to form, but when secrets and past doesn’t die, then it’s hard to survive the cold Christmas.
