Next of Kin Printed Book

The book opens in a remote village in Northern Iraq called Kani Masi and initially tells the tale of how a Kurdish couple named Salim and Amira meet and fall in love and have two beautiful boys. Initially, everything is wonderful for Salim and Amira until, while Amira is visiting a friend, a covert military operation is launched by the US special forces to plant fake evidence of a chemical attack in Kani Masi. 

The mission is led by a vicious US Navy SEAL, called Brett whose back story reveals why his team members fear him, and we quickly come to learn that he has no issue killing defenceless women and children in the pursuit of a successful mission. The soldiers kill the adults; however, the mission ends with disastrous consequences when the children fiercely fight back before Brett kills them and one of his team members who he fears may reveal the truth behind the mission. 

Brett becomes the only surviving soldier, wrongly believing that he has killed all of the villagers.  The story then moves to the present day where we meet a neglected teen called Rachel, whose mother and step brother are involved in a car crash with their car becoming submerged in a frozen river. 

Her mother survives but ends up fighting for her life in a coma, and Rachel’s stepbrother is missing, believed to be swept away in the frigid water. The hospital threatens to stop treating her mother and in a frantic search to find medical documents, Rachel discovers a hidden box containing information about an attack on a remote Kurdish village and she slowly becomes aware of her father’s involvement in it.

Puzzling as this is, it’s not the heart of the book’s mystery. It becomes rapidly clear that the doctor treating her mother is not who he seems, and the people close to Rachel are also hiding secrets. In her journey to find out the truth, Rachel stumbles across evidence of widespread sexual abuse of patients within the hospital, forcing her to take action that will change her life forever. Who exactly is her father? What has happened to her stepbrother? And when faced with an impossible choice, will she let somebody die to save someone else’s life?