The novel starts in present time. The neighbours of the Starlings celebrate their first-year anniversary when they first started living in the suburb. Then we learn that there is someone missing, and it seems that the unnamed person has been killed.
Then the novel goes back a year, and it is the open day for possible buyers of the houses. The Starlings is a new development that Katrin Gold in conjunction with her husband Bill and her brother-in-law have created. The building used to be a workhouse and in the 1970s and 1980s, it used to be a single mother home, and Katrin was one of the babies who was born there. She would like to know who her birth mother is but the files were burnt in a fire. Katrin and Bil have twin sons, Max and Ted, and Hugo is married to a French ex-model, Adele, who is not a very nice person. She drinks and uses drugs, and her daughter, Frida, feels she doesn't get the love she years for from her mother. Frida has been expelled from her boarding school, but she is a good girl.
On the open day one of the visitors is Ginny, who Bill and Hugo met in town. Ginny buys a property, and from the first moment we realise that she has been in the area before, and she must be one of the mothers who gave birth there. And when she sees old Thomas King, the grounds manager, she recognises him.
Another proprietor who was born in the home was Anne Ashbourne, who is a historian intending to write a book about the single mother home. Anne did find her birth mother when she signed up in a geneology site and gave a sample of her DNA.
Belinda and Poppy Parsons are also residents. They are always together, and Poppy goes to the same school as Frida, but Poppy is reluctant to hang out with her.
Graham and Dylan are also residents. They are a gay couple. Graham is a film producer and Dylan is a lawyer.
And Michael and Joy Bassett are also owners of a house, and they can be quite a nuisance, making uncomfortable comments and asking too much.
The beginning of the book has already hooked my attention. I am dying to know more about these characters and the crime that was committed.
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