Genre: Courtroom Thriller / Psychological Suspense Rating: ⭐⭐⭐ (3/5 Stars)
This review might get me banned from BookTok. But this is The Unfiltered Bookshelf and we keep it real.
Next of Kin by Kia Abdullah came into my life with some of the strongest reviews I had seen on BookTok in a long time. I was genuinely excited. The premise is devastating, the setup is powerful, and early readers could not stop talking about it. I went in with high expectations and an open mind.
And then I spent a week reading a book I normally would have finished in two to three days.
That right there tells you everything you need to know.
The Setup- And It Really Is That Good
Let me be clear about one thing before anything else. This book starts strong. Really strong.
Leila is one of the main characters and her story opens with a moment that immediately grabs you. Her brother in law calls with an emergency and needs her to pick up her young nephew and drop him off. Leila agrees. She gets in the car, her nephew is asleep in the back seat, and then a work emergency comes through. In the chaos and distraction of the call she autopilots directly to her office and does not remember her nephew is in the car until three hours later.
It was the hottest day of the year. He does not survive.
That opening is gutting. It is the kind of premise that makes your chest tighten because it is not some far-fetched villain plot, it is a terrible, devastating, heartbreakingly human mistake. And the immediate fallout is handled with enough weight and emotional complexity that I was completely locked in.
And then the book lost me.
What Happened in the Middle
The majority of Next of Kin splits its time between two things. The first is the backstory between Leila and her sister Yasmin, their history, their relationships, their significant others, and the complicated family dynamics that existed long before this tragedy. The second is the courtroom as Leila stands trial for manslaughter.
Both of these elements had potential. A courtroom thriller built on this kind of moral ambiguity should be compelling. An exploration of two sisters and what their relationship really looked like beneath the surface should add emotional depth.
Instead the pacing in the middle section is where this book loses everything the opening built. It drags. Scene after scene adds context but not tension. Chapter after chapter moves the story forward without ever making you feel the urgency you felt in those first pages. I kept reading because I kept hoping it would find its footing again.
It took me a full week to finish this book. I finish thrillers in two to three days maximum. That gap is not a reading schedule problem. That is a pacing problem.
The Final Stretch: Where Was This the Whole Time?
And then something shifted. In the final section of the book Kia Abdullah unleashes a string of twists that come so fast and so hard you can barely keep up with them. Revelations stack on top of revelations. The story that felt slow and restrained for so long suddenly has more energy than it knows what to do with.
My honest reaction was frustration. Not because the twists were bad, they were not. But because all I could think was WHERE WAS THIS ENERGY for the previous 200 pages? If this pacing had been woven throughout the entire book rather than saved entirely for the final stretch this would have been a completely different reading experience. This would have been a four star book easily.
The Ending That Finished It for Me
And then the final page arrived. And it was not the ending.
It was acknowledgements. Followed by an advertisement for another book.
The actual story ending, the final twist, lands and then the book just continues past it into back matter. That disconnect completely deflated whatever momentum the ending had built. A thriller’s final moment should land and close. This one landed and then kept going in the wrong direction.
If this book had ended before that final beat I would have rounded up to four stars. Instead I am giving it three out of five.
Final Verdict
Next of Kin is a book with an extraordinary premise, a genuinely powerful opening, and a final act with real energy, wrapped around a middle section that drags so significantly it undermines everything around it. The hype did not hit the way I hoped and I think that is okay to say out loud.
Three stars means it was not a bad book. It means it was a good book that did not live up to what it could have been. And sometimes that is the most honest review you can give.
Rating: 3 out of 5 stars ⭐⭐⭐
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Have you read Next of Kin? Drop your rating in the comments — did it live up to the BookTok hype for you or did you feel the same way I did?
