Cath Staincliffe is a writer who has an uncanny knack of really getting inside her character's heads. In this novel she has managed to tap into every parents worst nightmare, how would you cope if your child was missing? and worse, missing in a foreign country?
This was a fantastic crime novel but it was so much more than that as well. The story didn't finish when it was revealed what had happened to Lori (the missing daughter)it carried on so the reader could see the aftermath of a devastating crime. Jo physical reactions to the psychological torture she was enduring was so believable and I could really appreciate how difficult it was searching for your child in a country that is more concerned with appearances than solving the crime.
My only slight disappointment was the ending, it felt a little unresolved but then life doesn't come with everything neatly tied up and sorted out so why should fiction. Overall this was a great read that kept me glued to my kindle through to the early hours. ( )

I loved this - it was filled with tension and vivid descriptions of China, the frustrations of trying to do things in such a different culture and language barrier. To me though the ending seemed a bit rushed which is the reason for 4 stars. ( )

I have loved the previous books I have read by Cath Staincliffe and Half the World Away totally lived up to my expectations. In it, Jo Maddox and her ex-husband travel to China to search for their daughter, Lori, who went there travelling and went missing. I really felt Jo's pain (the story is told in the first person by Jo) as she desperately tried to find out what had happened to Lori and why they hadn't heard from her.

Cath Staincliffe is a brilliant writer. She's very emotive and managed to deliver some parts of the story that totally took me by surprise, more than once dropping a major event into what seemed like a run of the mill section. I found this book difficult to put down. The search for Lori is frantic and it's not hard to put yourself in the place of her parents, dealing with another country's bureaucracy and police department.

Cath Staincliffe is fast becoming one of my favourite writers, one of those that I would read anything by, without much consideration as to what it was about. I thought Half the World Away was a brilliant read. ( )