Member Review

It has been a long time since I have been tempted to give a thriller a full five stars. Usually the aftermath of reading a psychological thriller leaves a feeling of mild dissatisfaction because of the trauma involved. It was not the case in this one. I reviewed a previous book by the author (The Secret Mother) but this was a cut above it. Having been submerged in mostly historical fiction for the past couple of books, it was a change to watch Kristie Rawlings figure out if she was losing her mind or not and to see how she manages to handle herself.
The story is about secrets, how you can never really know what goes on behind closed doors. There may not be complete closure in this book for most people, despite which I was satisfied with it (which is saying something!).Kristie has had a child after several failed attempts and on a sleepy afternoon, she hears someone planning taking 'the baby' and leaving, on the baby monitor. Suddenly the seemingly irrational fear plants herself in her head despite her child being safe in her crib. Where and who the people on the monitor were starts to become an obsession for her. There is a large amount of patronizing by her near and dear that follows, but we can not be sure if it is real of if there is a more sinister reason for the events that follow. Kristie starts to doubt the realities of her life and she has more than one suspect with more than one alleged motive. 

There is a lot of self-doubt thrown in, which adds to the mood of the situation. I was glad that it was a relatively smaller book, I do not think I would have been able to handle any more second guessing and the constant checking over the shoulder involved in the unravelling of both Kristie and the situation .Overall it does live up to the thriller tag because of all the things Kristie ends up doing and the situations that befall her. There are uncomfortable scenarios in the book but nothing too drastic for anyone used to this genre.