‘Just Between Us’ by Adele Parks

Published by Harper Collins,
17 August 2023.
ISBN: 978-0-00839567-4 (HB)

Forty-three-year-old Kylie Gillingham has been missing for nearly two weeks. There is no body, but there are two husbands. DC Clements thinks she possibly is dead. Her bank accounts, phone and email accounts have not been touched. With a missing wife the police first look at the spouse, in this instance slightly complicated there being two of them.

Daan Janssen back in Holland where he and his influential family are well known is striving to appear unruffled by the situation in which he now finds himself. Trying to come to terms with the fact that his wife to whom he has been married to for four years is a bigamist.  The photos the police show him where it appears that she was kept chained to a radiator like a maltreated dog turns his stomach. The stomach punch is that the room they are showing him is in his apartment block, just six floors below his penthouse. To where were you Saturday night? He confesses that he had a friend stay over, Fiona Phillipson.

In the two weeks that Kylie has been missing, the lockdown measures that were just a possibility have now become law. DC Clements along with constable Tanner head off to interview Fiona Phillipson. With no answer at her home, they call on Mark, husband 1, and Fiona opens the door. Mark is not handling the situation well, remembering the death of his first wife, Frances, and with his sons Oil and Seb asking where their mum is. The youngest Seb won’t accept that Kylie is dead. Fiona, Kylie’s best friend says she has moved in with Mark to take care of Kylie’s two step- children.

DC Clements is above all things thorough, and something doesn’t feel right. What she needs is evidence, what she has are questions.

Stacie Jones has no memory since her brain surgery. She lives a quiet life in a coastal area, cared for by her father. Taking walks along the beach with him and Ronnie the dog, as she recovers from her cancer. Whilst her father shields her from the outside world, she begins to experience unsettling flashbacks. Then she begins to ask questions about her illness and the doctors who cared for her.

This was one of the most amazing books I have read this year. A gripping thriller, which I could not put down. Highly recommended.
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Reviewer: Lizzie Sirett

Adele Parks MBE was born in North Yorkshire and has lived in Botswana, Italy and London and is now settled in Guildford, Surrey. She is the author of twenty-two bestselling novels including the recent Sunday Times hit and audible Number One sensation One Last Secret. She is translated into 31 different languages.

She is an ambassador of the National Literacy Trust and the Reading Agency: two charities that promote literacy in the UK. She is a judge for the Costa Awards. In 2022 she was awarded an MBE for services to literature.

Connect with Adele Parks on Twitter @adeleparks, Instagram @adele_parks and Facebook @OfficialAdeleParks or visit

 www.adeleparks.com