Thanks to Netgalley for allowing me to read this arc early.

I have to admit. When I first read the blurb? I was a little skeptical about the storyline and concept. I’m wasn’t too sure I’d like the book. But I was pleasantly surprised. There were a few chapters were it was a little
Slow or hard to get through. But for the most part, Such a great read. Unique too.

Lauren Tranter has given birth to twin boys. While worrying about not immediately being in love with them — that mysterious mother’s love, she hears a voice sing “I’ll take yours and you can have mine.” Frightened by the woman, she calls the police who don’t take it seriously. However when Det. Sgt. Jo Harper hears the call, she doesn’t think Mrs. Tranter is making up what happened even though hospital security finds nothing in her room. Mrs. Tranter is evaluated by the hospital. Sleep deprived, at home with her babies she does her best taking care of them. When she sees the woman from the hospital outside of her home, she calls the police again. It is assumed she is hallucinating. When the babies are taken, only Det. Sgt. Jo Harper believes that she wasn’t hallucinating. When the babies are missing, Mrs. Tranter is institutionalized. Why? Will she get her babies back?

The author has written a mystery that has a bit of horror to it due to the folklore given about changelings. It strikes the fear of what happens to the original babies and what the changelings are. The nightmare that Mrs. Tranter goes through kept me wondering if anyone would believe and help her. It is a suspenseful mystery.

Motherhood has not started well for Lauren Tranter. So excited for the birth of her twin sons, labor was a horrendous affair involving forceps and emergency surgery. When her beautiful boys are placed on her chest, she doesn't immediately feel the overwhelming surge of love you're "supposed to" feel when you see your newborn infants. Not to mention the nursing staff are less than kind, and her husband practically skips out the door when it's his time to leave.

She's alone, stressed, and overwhelmed.

That's the time when the old lady appears, and offers to trade babies with her. Except what she's offering aren't quite babies.

CCTV and the hospital staff say she's seeing things. That a traumatic birth plus exhaustion have led to a mental break. That once she gets home, she'll get some sleep. That everything is just fine.

But are things fine? Is she, in her sleep deprived state, seeing things? Is a fairy tale nightmare coming for her children, or is post partum depression/psychosis sinking in?

What is really going on?

This. was. excellent. I jumped on this book when I read the synopsis, but when it came time to start it, I was nervous. If we went too far down the fairy tale route, would I still enjoy the story?

The creep factor in this book is SO intense. It's not too much, though there are some moments where I couldn't help think, "WTF Why would you tell a new mother that?"

Each chapter starts with fairy tale lore about what to do if your child has been traded for a changeling. Different culture interpretations of the myth, and they are all relatively disturbing. If I were a sleep deprived new mother, I could see the paranoia kicking in, and the wondering if I were imagining things. What is real, who can be trusted?

So many layers to this story, so many questions. Even the ending will leave you guessing.

This book needs loads of attention, because it is so captivating, so good.

Thank you Crooked Lane Books for gifting me an ARC of this book in exchange of an honest review. All opinons are my own.

I rate this book a 2 .5 out of 5 Stars.

Please, Please don’t let this review discourage you from reading this book, as I really am going to be the unpopular opinion here. Plenty of my fellow bloggers have given this 4 and 5 Stars. I don’t like writing negative reviews, but I also promised to give an honest review, and this is it.

It just didn’t work for me, and I really cannot pinpoint why, other than I just couldn’t be grabbed by the story, the characters, or the slow build up. And maybe part of the problem was that I psyched myself up to much on this one.

What I can say about this book, is that I liked the way you questioned whether, Lauren was suffering from Postpartum Psychosis, or were her babies really changelings? The Author did a great job writing it in a style to keep you guessing. I myself suffered with PPD, and I found Lauren to be very relatable, her feelings, her emotions, her fears, were all written very spot on.

I would consider this book to be more of a Dark Fairy Tale, or maybe a Dark Folk Lore, maybe the fact I thought of this as a thriller, is why I felt so let down.

That ending though, was pretty dang good.

Little Darlings was absolutely captivating. I was complete enthralled through out the whole book. I was completely intrigued by the whole story and the dark fairy tale/ dark folklore of this book. I was kept guessing from beginning to end and had a hard time putting this book down. I haven’t read anything like this book and I absolutely loved. It was creepy and just kept getting creepier but I had to find out all the answers. I will definitely be recommending this book to many of my friends.

I would like to thank NetGalley, the publisher and the author for my advanced copy of this novel in exchange for an honest review.

Little Darlings is a suspenseful narrative weaving in folklore and the paranormal. It is for sure a page-turner that keeps you guessing what is really going on. Lauren is a brand new mom of twin boys. She is convinced someone is trying to kidnap them, even trying to exchange them for some sinister changlings. The premise of this novel is immediately capturing, unfortunately, it falls flat in many aspects. Despite its intimate ties to some grimmer fairytales, the author struggles with seamlessly integrating their content. In fact, I thought on many occasions that the whole story could've worked without any mentions of river fairies or their attempts to swap out newborns. The protagonist, Lauren, is plenty unreliable on her own. We never know if she is delusional or if someone truly tried to take her babies. Another disappointment for me was the ending - it just left me feeling deflated. It was so anticlimactic that I was confused about whether or not I had missed a huge plot point somewhere along the way. I kept thinking "there has to be more, right?". I also failed to care about most of the characters. Detective Harper had several of her own issues that should've been explored more. Her "relationship" with Amy, the journalist, was like an afterthought and added very little to the story. Lauren's husband was sleazy and disgusting at the very least and hugely manipulative on his worst days. There was also NO solution to any of his indiscretions. Lauren herself was an ok protagonist but her personal struggles were incredibly relatable and earnest. And this is really where the author did her best work.

Golding tackled a very important issue - postpartum depression (PPD) - in a unique and smart way. Channeling it through an unreliable narrator in a setting of potential dark paranormal forces gave the novel some depth and made PPD accessible to a reader without any personal experience, like me. At times, I too had very visceral sensations as Lauren was going through her "breakdown". I could understand her thought processes and I really felt for her. I am so glad we are starting to address some of our mental health issues in creative ways. I'd say this book could be a trigger for someone suffering from PPD but is definitely an interesting resource nonetheless. It sure allows bringing awareness to a topic that we often treat as hush-hush. I hope Golding will continue her writing journey along those lines and I will check out her next book.

Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for providing me with an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This book is difficult to review, probably because it was so hard to read. Not because it wasn't well written, mind you, in fact the opposite is true. It's fantastic... but it's difficult because of the awful nature of events. I think it was mostly supposed to be a quasi-urban-fantasy-sci-fi-thriller-mystery-with-a-twist amalgamation, but it was also psychologically a little bit in the horror genre as it explores many people's deep-rooted fears - children being kidnapped, not being believed and everything thinking you're crazy, being locked up and medicated in an institution, creatures that are coming after you, etc.

Honestly, this book was super compelling, hard to put down, and successful in what it attempts to do - get in your head, stir up your mental pot, and set things a-boiling.

I don't want to spoil too much, so I can't really go into too much more detail, but I also feel like this book could be an exploration of post-partum as well. As someone who can't and will never experience that difficulties of childbirth and postpartum, I can't speak much on the subject or whether this is the author's intention.

But I will say this much. #notteamPatrick

Little Darlings is a creepy, engaging, hair-raising tale, one which I was happy to review. The addition of the dark fairy folklore regarding twins made this novel so much more sinister.

A new mother's worst nightmare is the premise of Little Darlings.

Lauren Tranter is the new mother of twin boys, Morgan and Riley. She's overwhelmed, experiencing postpartum depression and if that wasn't enough, one of the nights while she's still at the hospital, a young woman with twins wants to exchange/take her babies. Lauren runs away and hides in the bathroom and calls the cops. Of course, no one can find the woman and her babies. They all think it was Lauren hallucinating. She's tired, she was given medications during delivery so the conclusion is that she was imaging the whole event.

DS Jo Harper reviews the report the next morning and something about the event pushes her to meet Lauren and to further investigate it. Jo believes Lauren. She knows something happened to Lauren at the hospital. Sadly, her boss doesn't agree with her and using the police resources is not something he wants to agree on. Jo doesn't want to leave the case and she starts using her own free time to follow some leads.

Then the worst happens. While on an outing with the babies a month after they were born, Lauren falls asleep on a bench and when she wakes up, her babies are gone. Jo is called to help with the kidnapping. She finds the twins but when they returned them to Lauren, she shockingly screams that they're not hers!

I liked both Lauren and DS Jo Harper. It was interesting not knowing if Lauren was imagining it all or if it was real. The folklore at the beginning of every chapter really helps with the eeriness. Jo had her own reasons for investigating the case involving babies and she tried her best to help Lauren.

Little Darlings reads itself. The whole story was spooky. It had my attention from beginning to end.

I heard this could become a movie. Perfect script for one.

Cliffhanger: No

4/5 Fangs

A complimentary copy was provided by Crooked Lane Books via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

The most affecting passages in Little Darlings come early on - when Lauren is struggling as a brand new mom, bone-tired, sleep-deprived, and getting little help from her husband. I just wanted to somehow enter the story and relieve her for a few hours so that she could sleep and regain some of her energy. Every mother will see themselves in Lauren, not only in the first few months after giving birth but in the sheer horror and panic surrounding every mother's worst fear - what if someone took my baby when I wasn't looking?

Little Darlings is taut with suspense, as the novel expertly straddles the line between post-partum depression and folktales about changelings - fairy creatures who take the place of stolen human babies. In one chapter, I am sure that the fairies stole Morgan and Riley but in the next I am equally convinced that physically and emotionally strung Lauren is in the middle of a psychotic episode. In which camp does the ending finally fall? - I'll leave it to you to find out.

I was provided with a complimentary copy of this book so I could give an honest review.

Little Darlings by Melanie Golding has been described as an "unsettling thriller perfect for fans of Neil Gaiman and Grimms’ Fairy Tales." I would say I enjoyed the novel, its plot, and the writing.

Like almost all mothers with newborns, Lauren Tranter is exhausted from lack of sleep. Lauren has it worse than many mothers because she gave birth to twins. SInce she is so exhausted and sleep deprived no one believes her when, still in the hospital, she claims someone tried to take her children and wants to replace them with her own.

A month later her children are taken but when they are returned Lauren knows they are not really her children. Again, no one believes her.

What do you do when everyone tells you are wrong and does not believe you? Do you start to wonder if they are right? What if you are positive you are right and everyone else is wrong?

Melanie Golding's debut novel is a slow start but it is worth reading. The novel gets creepier and most suspenseful as the story progresses. The writing and character development, and the creepy stories at the beginning on the chapters helped set the mood well.

Review published on Philomathinphila.com, Smashbomb, and Goodreads on 3/22/19. Will publish on Twitter, Facebook, Amazon, and Barnes and Noble on its release date, April 30, 2019.

Such a gripping story!

I'd love to thank the author, NetGalley and Crooked Lane Books for this book in exchange for an honest review.

This book comes out on 30th of April, so you have plenty of time to gather your money for it. This book is amazing! What didn't worked for me was the ending, because it didn't go out as I wanted it to be. But still, 4 FULL Stars! It has -kind of- an open ending.

This book starts with our main character, Lauren Tranter, just given birth to boy twins. She and her caring husband, Patrick, name their boys Morgan and Riley. I'll spare you with the gory details of Lauren talking about her bloody experience (literally). This kind of made me scared about having babies, but I guess it depends on every woman's body.

So, she has to stay in hospital for a while after the birth. In the first night, she hears somebody near her; another woman and her twin boys. But the next day when she asks a nurse about another woman, she denies saying that Lauren was the only woman giving birth to twins. So in the next nighttime, that woman comes again, and Lauren sees her and that woman tells Lauren that she wants to exchange the babies. She even tries to catch Lauren, but she escapes, takes the children with her and hides into the bathroom with them and calls the police, until the nurses come for her.
Of course they found nobody there and everyone thinks Lauren is insane. Even her husband.

After they let her go home, she stays a whole month in the house taking care of her babies, and seeing that woman outside, again.
Meanwhile, Detective Jo Harper comes into the scene. She tries her best to see what's going on and when Lauren gets out of the house eventually and her babies go missing, she believes Lauren, despite everyone else. She even finds the babies.
But Lauren says these are not her babies, because they act weird.
From here, a lot of crazy things happen. And Harper gets so close to the truth and the weird woman. Unfortunately, like I said earlier, the end takes another course and the novel ends open.

Harper was my favourite character in this book, because she believed that this was not a simple case and she dug dipper into it and found quite curious things about this situation. She is very determinate to find what's happening, and I like this about her.

This book is based on a fairy tale, but the author created an ingenious way to tell this 'story'. She has real talent and hooks you by the first pages!

I really liked this book and I'm happy that I found it on NetGalley. You should read it, too, when it comes out on April 30th. You will not regret it.

In this debut novel by Melanie Golding, we follow the journey of a seemingly-innocent, but understandably, exhausted new mother to twin boys. Strange events occur just after the birth of her twins, a scary "river woman" appears in the next bed and ominously threatens that if the mother, Lauren, ever leaves her babies alone, even for a moment, she will snatch them and exchange them for her own twins who appear to be strange, filthy, "creatures" of the river, not truly human. The book starts out a bit slow but picks up in the second half as strange things start to happen that make us (and Lauren's husband, Patrick, Detective Harper and her doctors) all wonder--is it Lauren's exhausted imagination, her mental health history or something truly dark and sinister happening, not of this world?

Like other reviewers, I found this book enticingly creepy, but had to find out what happened! While Golding doesn't really give us the clean/tidy ending one might hope for, we are left to wonder--was Lauren the culprit? Is her mind playing tricks on her? Or was she inexplicably tied to some dark, long-lost and forgotten historical disappearance of the "drowned village?"

That, friends and fellow readers, is up to you to interpret, mull and decide.

Overall, I enjoyed the fairy/historical additions and suppositions Golding weaves into this story. Not traditionally a fan of dark and twisted fairy-like stories, I found this one well-done and not too over the top. For those who tend to veer away from fantasy/supernatural novels, I'd encourage you to give this one a try. It has much more reality than fantasy and the parts that are included are done in a way that doesn't force the reader to fully immerse in a fantasy world.

3.5 stars!

Thank you NetGalley, Melanie Golding and Crooked Lane Books for the free e-book in exchange for an honest review.

Lauren is exhausted after giving birth to twin boys, but she knows what she saw in her hospital room that night. A strange woman tried to take her babies and replace them with her own. But when the police show up, there is no one to be found and everyone believes she is seeing things. A month later, Lauren falls asleep in the park and the babies disappear and when they are found, Lauren knows that something isn’t right. These don’t act like her babies, but they look like her babies. Lauren knows these aren’t her babies, and she’ll do whatever she can to get her babies back.

At the beginning of this book I was worried I was going to have to mark it as unable to finish because I was having trouble following Lauren’s thoughts and was worried the whole book would be like this. I am so glad that I kept reading! Thinking back now, it almost seems like those chapters are hard to get through because the narrator is so tired and discombobulated. I enjoyed how the folklore was incorporated into this novel because you don’t see that a lot and I loved the little stories that just fed into Lauren’s thinking. I really enjoyed Harper’s character and how trusting she is of Lauren and how she really wants to help her even though it is going to get her into trouble with the higher ups. I enjoyed thoroughly Lauren and how fully she believed what she was seeing and how twisted the story became the further you got into it. The author was so creative with this novel and I loved how unique it was. I would definitely recommend picking it up!

Out April 30th!

The story is inspired by some deliciously creepy dark fairy tales that adds an extra layer to the sinister, menacing and eerie feel of the book. I absolutely love these types of tales and found myself devouring this one!

This was one spooky read! Take your favorite psych thriller and combine it with Grimm's Fairy Tales...the real ones that are gruesome, dark and scary...not the version with sunshine and rainbows. I can't even put all of my thoughts into words because I was constantly questioning what was going on. Just when my mind would grasp onto one theory, something would happen and make me second guess everything. I was never quite sure exactly what to believe.

“Choose one. Choose one or I’ll take them both. I’ll take yours and you can have mine. You’ll never know the difference. I can make sure they look just the same. One’s fair. Two is justice done.”

The story is told by the mother, Lauren Tranter and police investigator, Jo Harper. Lauren is the mother of newborn twin boys. She is clearly exhausted with little to no support at home. While still in the hospital after her delivery, she has an unsettling encounter in the middle of the night with a strange woman who wants to trade children with her. She hides in the bathroom with her babies and calls the police. Unfortunately, no one believes her but it does get her on the radar of Jo Harper. Even though Harper's superior tells her it isn't a valid case, she has a gut feeling and continues to follow up on potential leads.

Lauren's paranoia worsens when she and the twins go home. Her husband, Patrick isn't very helpful and caring for the babies falls almost entirely on her. She's afraid that someone wants to steal the babies so she stays locked in the house with them and barely sleeps. An incident occurs later in the book and she's convinced that her babies have been swapped and aren't her own. From this point forward, the book also takes on a heartbreaking quality. As a mother, I could totally relate to being willing to do whatever you think is necessary to save "your" children. However, as the reader, I continued to wonder if these were actually her children or not. You could never tell if it was folklore or psychosis at work. In addition, the author's clever use of fairytale quotes at the start of many chapters adds to the creepy and gothic tone of the book. In turn, this keeps the reader in a state of indecision about whether this is all due to mystical reasons or simply a mother's mental illness.

Thank you to Crooked Lane Books and Netgalley for providing this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I love a good fairy story mixed with a thriller and this did not disappoint. As a mum myself I could relate with the uncertainty and fear that the main character was feeling. Admittedly I thought that she made some really stupid mistakes but these were soon forgiven as the mystery unfolds. I liked that the book starts at the ending and then goes back to the beginning it created that great cyclical structure that I enjoy in a novel. The descriptive language was very engaging and I felt that this is overall a good book.

I wasn't fully expecting the supernatural/fairy tale aspect to be as present as it was. It was described as thriller/mystery, and for me, it was definitely more horror/paranormal, even with a detective as one of the main characters. It was well-written, but I wasn't as drawn to the characters as I would have liked and because it was described as thriller/mystery, I spent much of the time thinking that the supernatural elements were a delusion, so perhaps did not have the suspension of disbelief that the story really needed.

I received this book from netgalley in exchange for my honest review -
This book is any mother’s worst nightmare. Lauren gives birth to twins- only to have a lady come into her hospital room late at night and try to abduct her babies. Lauren is now considered a mental patient- because no one believes her. She now has to spend the rest of the story trying to prove her sanity.

I really enjoyed this book and honestly feel it was a wonderful debut novel from Melanie Golding! I was waiting to read this book from the moment I got it and I was not disappointed at all. It starts off slowly but the build-up is steady and eerie, the eerie feeling which just grabs from the beginning and doesn't let go!. The book is written beautifully and the environment created is chilling and brilliant. Overall a brilliant, sinister and compulsive read, every minute of it which I loved. I couldn't recommend this book enough. A big thank you to NetGalley and Crooked Lane Books for giving me the opportunity to read this book in exchange of my honest review.

Thank you to Melanie Golding, NetGalley and Crooked Lane books for the ARC of this book, in exchange for an honest review.

Yikes! What an eerie and compelling read!

The book starts out with Lauren Tranter in hospital having just had a traumatic birth of twin boys. She is sleep deprived and exhausted. She begins to hear and see unsettling things in the night, this is dismissed by the hospital staff and her husband Patrick (Oh how I hated Patrick!) and it is put down to post-natal depression and exhaustion, but is it?

I thought this book was beautifully written, I felt totally immersed in the story. I could identify easily with Lauren’s character, even not having children myself, I could empathise with her thoughts and her feelings completely. The story felt very real, even the supernatural elements which added a whole lot to this creepy tale!

This psychological thriller is steeped in Folklaw and other dark tales, the suspense builds and builds throughout. It keeps you guessing until the very end – what is real and what is imagined? Is Lauren suffering a psychotic episode or are there dark and sinister forces at play? I changed my mind several times! I found it very hard to put this book down.

I would highly recommend this one if you like a dark and unsettling psychological thriller, with creepy Folklaw undertones, it crawls under your skin and stays with you!

I am excited to read more from Golding in the future!