Little Darlings – Melanie Golding Review

Overview

Author – Melanie Golding

Publisher – Crooked Lane Books

Publish date – 30th April 2019

Genre – Horror/Mystery and Thriller

POV – Third person, past tense

Rating – 4/5

Summary –

“SOON TO BE A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE.

Mother knows best takes on a sinister new meaning in this unsettling thriller perfect for fans of Neil Gaiman, Grimms’ Fairy Tales, and Aimee Molloy’s The Perfect Mother.

Everyone says Lauren Tranter is exhausted, that she needs rest. And they’re right; with newborn twins, Morgan and Riley, she’s never been more tired in her life. But she knows what she saw: that night, in her hospital room, a woman tried to take her babies and replace them with her own…creatures. Yet when the police arrived, they saw no one. Everyone, from her doctor to her husband, thinks she’s imagining things.

A month passes. And one bright summer morning, the babies disappear from Lauren’s side in a park. But when they’re found, something is different about them. The infants look like Morgan and Riley—to everyone else. But to Lauren, something is off. As everyone around her celebrates their return, Lauren begins to scream, these are not my babies.

Determined to bring her true infant sons home, Lauren will risk the unthinkable. But if she’s wrong about what she saw…she’ll be making the biggest mistake of her life.

Compulsive, creepy, and inspired by some of our darkest fairy tales, Little Darlings will have you checking—and rechecking—your own little ones. Just to be sure. Just to be safe.”

Buy it – Little Darlings

Full Review

(Avoid any possibility of spoilers – read the Quick Review)

With newborn twins, Lauren, like most first time mothers, is exhausted, anxious and under supported. But she had seen it, hadn’t she? Alone, bleary eyed, with her babies in the middle of the night – a woman, who wanted to take them from her. Swap them for her own little creatures.

If it weren’t for the chilling moments, this book could very well be just an honest portrayal of first-time motherhood. How easily you can be overcome with new responsibilities, how isolated you can become and the fears that loom over you when you realize just how much you can love these tiny, vulnerable little humans.

An engulfing melding of mystery, fantasy and horror in one. Little darlings uses classic folk and fairy tales to cleverly weave, at once, a relatable and nightmarish story for mothers.

The story told from the perspective of Lauren and Harper, two women who it would be easy to assume have little in common. Both however are in turn unsupported, isolated and told they are crazy for following and believing in their instincts.

Harper is the only one who resonates with Laurens predicament, the only one with the intuition to dig into Laurens case. And I, like Harper, was so captured by Laurens story that I never stopped to consider if she was really an unreliable narrator. If she could be wrong.

So vivid and sympathetic to Lauren’s experience; her exhaustion, her unpreparedness, the marital imbalance, the trauma of child birth on a mother’s body, the fear and drive to protect her children. Do we like Harper, endeared to her experience, miss the warning signs as the horrors unfold bit by bit?

I have received a copy of this book via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

– 4/5 The reality of motherhood and the fantasy elements are portrayed and melded so convincingly it’s difficult to distinguish between the two.