Publication Date July 2, 2024

Thanks to Scribner and NetGalley, I recently received a copy of Michael Robotham’s latest psychological thriller, Storm Child (in exchange for this honest review). It includes familiar characters Cyrus Haven and Evie Cormac, both of whom were in the earlier novels Good Girl, Bad Girl,  When She Was Good, and Lying Beside You. This time, Joe O’Loughlin (Cyrus’s mentor) is not part of the story but (spoiler alert!) as expected, it was still AWESOME. 

Good Girl, Bad Girl, book #1 in the series, told the story of Cyrus meeting Evie Cormac when he was called in to help after she was found trapped in a torture house. (PTSD, anyone?)  Evie has the uncanny (and useful!) ability to tell when someone is lying, and she helped Cyrus solve a tricky case in that first book. In When She Was Good, #2 in the series, Evie and Cyrus reconnected and, as Cyrus worked to uncover the secrets of Evie’s past, he found that  he was exposing her to serious danger. Quite a dilemma! 

Then in Lying Beside You, the third in the series,  Cyrus had begun sharing his house with Evie, who was now less a child and more a truly damaged teenager, still with her gift of being able to tell whether someone is lying or not. She went back to school and, at Cyrus’s urging, took a job.Considering her issues with rules and authority, she was doing well…and now we are at book #4, Storm Child, which really expands on Evie’s emerging character and way of viewing and dealing with the world. (“I’ve decided there are two types of people in the world–the overachievers and those who want to see all the overachievers die in a flaming car crash.”)

Evie witnesses the bodies of seventeen migrants wash up on a Lincolnshire beach, and as it turns out, there is one survivor. He tells the police that their tiny boat was sunk after being rammed on purpose in order to destroy evidence of …what? Smuggling? Sex trafficking? A combination? As he works with the police, Cyrus sees immediately there is an undefined link between Evie and this horrible crime. But he has a dilemma: if he helps her discover the truth about her past, will he be causing her more harm than good? What is the actual worth of solving this particular crime? 

It’s an amazing unraveling of a complex story which touches on several social issues while presenting well-developed characters who go through quite a lot on the way to solving multiple mysteries. I loved it. Five stars. I miss Joe but look forward to more from Cyrus and Evie.