Thursday, May 23, 2024

Book Review: The Night They Stole My Baby by Darren O'Sullivan

 

Book Description

My baby is due in two weeks. Hand on my bump, I swear to my little girl, I won’t be anything like my mother.

I’m walking home after the perfect baby shower, enjoying the cool summer evening breeze. I can’t wait to rest my aching feet. 

I’m almost at my door when the world goes black. 

I wake with a blinding pain in my head. Beeping of machines in background. I open my eyes to a white room. 

Panic jolts through me. I reach down to my bump, to where my baby should be. But she’s not there.  

Then my fingers find a rough line of stitches.  

Someone has taken my baby.  

Out of me. 


My Review

Emily has a big secret about her childhood that she's keeping from her friends. She's scared and excited to be about to give birth to her baby daughter even thought the father of the baby and she aren't going to be together, they should be able to raise the child without many problems if they co-parent well. But as Emily is about home from her baby shower someone runs up behind her, injects her with something and she loses consciousness. Waking up in the hospital in pain is bad enough but when she realizes that she's no longer pregnant, she's out of her mind. All of her friends tell her the baby is fine but is she? 

When her baby and the father of the baby go missing, Emily can only wait for the police to do their jobs and find her child. But things don't go as fast as they should and one disaster after another happens. Where is the baby? Who has her and why? Could this kidnapping have something to do with the big secret she's been keeping from everyone?

This story is told in alternate times lines, the present where the search for Emily's baby is ongoing and the story of what happened in her childhood when her sister was murdered. As the story unfolds about her childhood, it was absolutely heartbreaking reading what those kids went though. It was also sad to see Emily blame herself about what happened to her sister. 

I had so many thoughts about who could have taken her baby and why but the truth and the twist was one I didn't see coming. I thought I had this one figured out and I was so wrong. 

Waiting to see if the baby would be found alive or ever found at all had me on the edge of my seat. I think the story stalled a little because nothing was happening with the search, no new clues to keep us engaged enough to keep reading at times. But things do pick up towards the end of the book where we finally get to see what was actually going on and that was a good ending.

I give this book 4 out of 5 stars. 

Disclosure: I was given an e-ARC of this book via NetGalley but all thoughts and opinions are my own.