Pages: 317
Published: 24th January 2019
Genre: Domestic Thriller
Content warnings: Child death, attempted suicide
When a mysterious note arrives for six months pregnant Dr Eliana Hughes, she begins to doubt every aspect of her life – from her mixed feelings about motherhood to her marriage to Martin, who has become distant in recent months.
As the person behind the note escalates their campaign to out Eli’s husband as a cheat, she finds herself unable to trust even her own instincts, and as pressure builds, she makes a mistake that jeopardises her entire future.
Elsewhere, someone is watching. Someone who desperately wants a baby to call their own and will go to any lengths to become a mother – and stay a mother…
This is an immersive thriller that begins on a menacing note and ultimately gathers a level of tension that peaks in the final pages. Claire Allan uses multiple POVs to tell a highly character driven story with great subtlety, and as a result it had me fully engaged throughout.
Eliana Hughes is heavily pregnant and working as a hospice nurse, when she begins receiving anonymous notes that suggest her husband Martin is cheating on her. This soon causes a rift between them, so Eliana decides to stay with her mother, who is caring but obsessively overbearing.
As the notes become more unsettling, Eliana begins to feel isolated and overwhelmed, with severe consequences. Soon, she does not know who to trust, and that brings an underlying element of suspense to the story that comes across very well.
The book is told from the point of view of both Eliana and her mother, along with that of Louise, a woman who is desperate to have a child of her own after suffering many miscarriages. All of them were written in the first person, and Louise was undoubtedly the most mysterious. Very little about her was given away, but emptiness and despair was palpable in her every sentence.
I liked Eliana; she was a vulnerable protagonist whose life was being manipulated, and I found it easy to connect with her. The rest of them were all very difficult to trust initially, but it was even before the halfway mark that I began to work it all out, so the twist near the end did not come as a major surprise in the slightest.
However, that did not diminish the quality of the storytelling. I loved how I was consumed by the writing style, which perfectly reflected the atmosphere that Claire Allan was trying to convey. The best example of this is towards the end, where some of the emotion within the plot had a profound effect on me.
Overall, this was a thriller that succeeds on many counts; in particular with the writing style and the character development. If I am being slightly critical, the twists were quite easy to work out, but that does not take any of the tension away. This book just confirms that I am becoming a real fan of Claire Allan’s work.
Written with such refinement in a way that draws you in, I was absorbed in the story, and even if it was predictable, it was definitely a success.
My rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Stephen Reads Books 