It’s always so interesting to read a story that’s being told by an unreliable narrator. It’s even better when that narrator’s character has been written so well, that they’re completely likeable, like Lucy, the narrator in The Baby …
Blurb:
There’s a baby in your house. It isn’t yours…
The day I was told I’d never be able to have a child, my world came crashing down. My husband says he still loves me but I lie awake at night, wishing we could have a family.
One morning, my husband’s side of the bed is cold and empty. I hear a noise and head downstairs.
In the middle of the rug in my living room is a wooden drawer. Swaddled inside, with perfect rosy cheeks and beautiful round blue eyes, a baby gazes up at me.
I shiver. It’s all I’ve ever wanted, but this baby is not mine…
My Review:
Imagine how very difficult it must be to desperately want your own baby, but to know that for you, it’s never going to happen. I’d think that the pain of this could be something almost unbearable to live with. But it’s the reality that Lucy must confront every day.
Thankfully, her husband Miles spends a lot of time away, working on an oil rig, so it’s not something she feels she has to dwell on with him regularly even though she might want to. Unfortunately, the more he’s away, the more Lucy finds herself wallowing in booze and self-pity.
It’s after one of her booze binges that Lucy wakes up with a massive hangover with absolutely zero recollection of how she even got home the previous night! With Miles away, working on the rig, she wonders why she is sure there’s someone else in the house with her. She’s horrified to discover a baby kicking and gurgling away in a pulled-out drawer of her living room! How on earth did it get there? And more importantly … whose is it?!
Before you immediately think to yourself that the obvious answer would be that she should head straight to the nearest police station, stop for just a minute, because although Lucy herself knows in the back of her mind that this would make the most sense, there’s a little voice that stops her. So she doesn’t.
Lucy might come across as a bit shallow, possibly slightly simple and without depth at first, but stick around because there’s so much more to her and her story than first meets the eye! As she tries desperately to piece together the lost hours of the previous night, the reader discovers that Lucy is one of those fabulous conundrums: a thoroughly unreliable narrator whose heart is in the right place!
Her unreliability stems from her tendency towards the bottle – she knows that her dependency on alcohol to comfort her both in her loneliness for Miles in his long absences, and her longing for her own baby that she knows she can never have, are unhealthy. Truth be told though, she has no inclination to stop. Her good heart shows in her complete and utter determination to keep the baby in her care safe. Regardless of who he is and who he might belong to, she knows that she’s responsible for him, and she needs to keep him from harm. Under the pressurized circumstances she finds herself in, in my book, that makes her a pretty okay person!
There are twists and turns a-plenty. You will make assumptions (so many!), and second-guess yourself numerous times. This is an author who is skilled in the art of building anticipation and pacing the action perfectly so that the reader is turning pages at high speed!
Thank you to Bookouture for the blog tour.
Author Bio:
A J McDine was a journalist and police press officer until she realised writing fiction was much more fun.
She lives in Kent in the UK with her husband, fellow thriller writer A J Wills, their two sons and a pair of very demanding cats.
The author of dark, domestic thrillers, she loves to keep her readers guessing till the very last page.
When she’s not writing, playing tennis or attempting to run a 5k, she can generally be found gazing blankly out of the window as she dreams up conflict and tension for her poor characters.
Social Media Links:
Website: https://www.ajmcdine.com/
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