Author: Celia Silvani
Publisher: Orion
Publication Date: November 2024
Genre: Thriller / Suspense / Women’s Fiction
Buy the Book: Amazon | BN | Audible
Description: They said a mother knows best and I believed them. Was I wrong?
It is supposed to be a dream. James and I have been trying for years. But now it is starting to feel like a nightmare.
Doctors don't ask questions, or care about how you're feeling. They just tell you what to do. They never listen.
Mam and James don't understand either. James thinks I'm being anxious and Mam says it'll pass. It always does. That's what she did when Dad died.
I've never felt more alone. Or scared.
Then I joined an online group for mothers. A sisterhood, really. They might be on a screen, but sometimes it feels like they know me better than James. They listen, they care. It's all I could have asked for.
Until the worst happens and I see them for who they are. But if I leave, what if they come for me next?
My Thoughts: I enjoyed this book and thought the subject matter was thought provoking but I didn’t love it. Additionally, there are triggers in this story involving infertility and pregnancy loss. I felt increasingly frustrated at the lengths Claire went trusting complete strangers that she only knows online instead of midwives and doctors. I agreed with the general consensus that doctors and the medical profession make you feel like a number, but to trust advice from people who have zero medical background puts not only the mother but the fetus at risk. When tragedy strikes one of one women in the group who loses her nearly full-term baby, I was deeply disturbed at how this group of faceless women treated her simply because they did not approve of her seeking medical attention.
I understood how Claire felt torn wanting to do the right thing and her fear of hospitals and mistrust of doctors stemming from losing her father but I wanted to yell at her through most of the book that she should be seeking advice from people she knows in real life as well as experts in the field. I had such a huge problem that she told strangers she was pregnant before she told her own husband. In large part due to her behavior, I had a difficult time relating to or empathizing with her.
The plot moved me into thinking something horrifying was going to happen to Claire at the hands of the online group and my imagination was running wild thinking that someone was going to try to murder her and steal her baby. I must be reading too many thrillers because I am looking for psychopaths around every corner.
This is my first time reading the work of Celia Silvani and thought she illustrates well the fears and anxieties of not just a woman having her first child but the vulnerability of those who have struggled to conceive as well as the devastating grief of a pregnancy test not bringing the most desperately hoped for result.
My Final Verdict: Overall, the story ended with a lot of unanswered questions for me and a bit of a letdown in the thriller and suspenseful side of things. I think fans of both thrillers and women’s fiction will enjoy the story if they can overlook their personal biases regarding the best approach to childbirth.
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