Joint Review:The Farm by Tom Rob Smith

Author: Tom Rob Smith
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Date of publication: June 2014

If you refuse to believe me, I will no longer consider you my son.

Daniel believed that his parents were enjoying a peaceful retirement on a remote farm in Sweden. But with a single phone call, everything changes. 

Your mother...she's not well, his father tells him. She's been imagining things - terrible, terrible things. She's had a psychotic breakdown, and been committed to a mental hospital. 

Before Daniel can board a plane to Sweden, his mother calls: Everything that man has told you is a lie. I'm not mad... I need the police... Meet me at Heathrow.

Caught between his parents, and unsure of who to believe or trust, Daniel becomes his mother's unwilling judge and jury as she tells him an urgent tale of secrets, of lies, of a crime and a conspiracy that implicates his own father.


This is the first book I have read by this author.  Autumn told me that she enjoyed his other books, so I'll have to look them up to try out for myself.  The Farm ended up not being anything like I expected it to be.  I ended up really liking the story.  I was totally taken by surprise at the ending and that always makes me like a book even more. 

The story that Daniel's mother tells is believable, yet unbelievable at the same time.  I felt like the author did a good job of misdirection and building suspense. For a while you really don't know who to believe.  That is all I will say about the plot because it would ruin it if I said more.  I highly recommend this one!

I read Tom Rob Smith's 3 books in the Leo Demidov series.  I liked that series.  I thought Child 44 was the best.  I think what I like about his writing is that he is an English speaking writer but writes about foreign countries.  It's not translated writing, where there's the possibility of something lost along the way.  Sometimes it feels that way when I'm reading some of the translated works, I'm reading it and I'm thinking either this writer is totally messed up in the head or something just didn't get translated right.  

I thought The Farm was pretty good.  The first 2/3 of the book was kinda plodding along.  Kari assured me there was a really good twist and that was the thing that kept me going.  It was, but it was really far along in the book.  It took a long time to get there.  Yes, I would recommend Tom Rob Smith, but I might recommend Child 44 over this book.