Book review: Heatstroke by Hazel Barkworth

It’s a shame that the pandemic will almost certainly thwart the August exodus to foreign beaches, as Hazel Barkworth’s Heatstroke is a perfect sun-lounger read: a sizzling page-turner with twists, turns and revelations in all the right places. Still, you can make do with the park.

Our scene is suburban Surrey, and it’s hot — very hot. Rachel is an English teacher at a local comp and a reluctant convert to the inertia of small-town existence.

Her husband Tim, who works in Cincinnati, is a spectral figure we encounter mainly on Skype (how prescient), so Rachel mainly shares their big house with their 15-year-old daughter Mia, a Gen Z archetype who likes Snapchat, Taylor Swift and contouring her face like a Kardashian, and has a boyfriend called Aaron with expensive jeans and a designer haircut.

Mia and her girlfriends meet the boys’ group in the local park, getting dolled up in teenybopper bodycon at Mia’s house, while Rachel eavesdrops on their conversations. Her daughter has grown up and learned to snark: Rachel misses their kinship and — bored and lonely — is fixated on the lives of Mia and her friends, many of whom she also teaches.

Rachel’s fixation revs up a gear when one of Mia’s group, Lily, vanishes one summer afternoon. The school is colonised by blokey news camera crews, and Lily’s deflated parents pop up on television, making desperate pleas for their daughter’s return. To say much more is to spoil the thrills and spills of what happens; suffice to say, secrets are revealed and Rachel is lured into the drama of Lily’s disappearance, while her relationship with Mia sours.

This is Barkworth’s first novel and she’s hit the format out of the park: Heatstroke is pacy and gripping, with neat use of enigmatic flashbacks. The characters of Rachel and Mia are elegantly drawn, with Barkworth capturing the intensity of a mother-teen daughter relationship, and Mia’s tics and language are well-observed, as are the parochial preoccupations of the other local mums. It’s a stylish thriller with plenty of secrets; certainly, it’ll spice up a staycation.

Heatstroke by Hazel Barkworth​ (Headline, £16.99), buy it here.