Now the only way to read this book, in my opinion, is to listen to it. Melanie Golding narrates some truly terrifying tales and the narrator Stephanie Racine just scared the bejesus out of me. When she is doing the singing for the old woman, the production had it distorting her voice, the chills I had were awful. Those scenes scared me, A LOT!! They were horrible but so good at the same time!!

I wasn’t sure what to expect with this story, I didn’t want to read the blurb too much as I wanted to be surprised and boy was I. I know for a fact, I am so glad that I wasn’t pregnant when I read this, nor when mini-me was born and thank god I didn’t have twins. If I did I do not think I would leave the house, shower, eat, sleep you know all those things to function. Because there is no way you can function which is basically what started to happen to Lauren.

I am still not clear on a few things, but the ending was quite chilling. I can’t say too much as I don’t want to ruin it but I have my theories which I need to discuss with someone!! But it is definitely a book that plays on your mind and question what is real.

This book is just so unsettling, just as you think there may be a calm, the interludes in the book will raise the hair on the back of your neck. It will chill you to the core. This book will have you questioning if we are in the midst of Post Natal Depression and on the brink of a breakdown…..or is there something more sinister at work? What do you believe? I found the way that Golding tackled PND spot on, I struggled terribly when I had mini-me, not that I went too near the darkness of Lauren but I didn’t cope, if I had twins as I wanted, then who knows this could have been my future. That’s a terrifying thought!

I know for one thing if I heard the voice that Lauren does on the maternity ward, I would have reacted the same way. I would have creeped out and I would be holding on tighter to my mini-me. I still do now after some of the folklore stories Melanie told throughout. These stories have to come from somewhere, hadn’t they?

The only note I wrote about this book was, Patrick =douche and highly suspicious. Throughout the book, I still suspected Patrick (Laurens husband) was up to no good and I still feel like he was. Something still doesn’t sit right with me. He provided no support to Lauren, not helping with the feeds or at nighttime. He can see she is clearly struggling and instead of supporting her it was me, me, me and oh get out the house. She obviously needs the support and he is so not the right person. I am still highly suspicious. However, on the other hand, I wonder if the reason I feel like that is that the story is told by Lauren, and therefore things are misconstrued and cast doubts where there is no need. Don’t you just love a book that makes you think!!

I will say it again, it is a dark, chilling, truly terrifying book to read. It is going to stay with me for a long time and I will probably question all babies I see now. I mean they freak me out as it is, worse so now!!!!!!!!! (Yes I am aware I had one). I was compiling my book of the year list but I stopped until I had finished this one because I wanted to see if I still loved it at the end. The short answer I did! It played on my fears, add in the folklore tales to further increase the paranoia surrounding the story. The audiobook could unhinge you, the singing alone, still get chills thinking about it.

It is one I will be recommending to all. Not everything is tied up in a bow but I am happy with that because the power of imagination and suggestion is more powerful here. It has made me question what is real and what I believe.

What a book.

A very disturbing book, playing on the fears of all mothers. I devoured this in one session. Highly recommended

I feel like I've read the same book a thousand times before.

A detective with a secret. A woman who may or may not be crazy that noone listens to. An unreliable witness in a care home with memory problems. Help from a tech geek with a full lab set up in his basement. It ticked every box on the cliche list.

I'm giving it two stars because it was way too long, It repeat itself a lot and the ending really was nothing special at all. That being said I liked the beginning and how the strain of having twins affected Lauren's relationship. That was believable. Her hospital stay was also grisly and realistic.

Unfortunately there is just too many books on the market these days that are exactly the same and this is one of them.

I enjoyed this book whilst finding it creepy and disturbing at the same time. It was scary to imagine that the storyline could be true. I found it very descriptive and believable.

Many thanks to netgalley and Melanie Golding for the advanced copy of this book. I agreed to give my unbiased opinion voluntarily.

Lauren is convinced that someone is trying to steal her newborn twins and no matter who she talks to about this, no one believes her.

As a parent, this book will give you chills. There will be moments when you are questioning your own sanity in the same way that Lauren does throughout the story and getting frustrated alongside her. It feels a little difficult to follow at times, but that does add to the stress of the plot.

Lauren is a typical new mum except that she has double the trouble with newborn twins Morgan and Riley, Whilst recovering in hospital after their births, she is woken by a woman trying to steal her babies and replace them with her own 'creatures'. No one believes Lauren and claim she is just exhausted and imagining things.... but she knows what she saw... Fast forward a month and the twins disappear from her side at a local park and when they are found, Lauren's mother's instinct kicks in and knows there is something odd and different about them ...What follows next is Lauren's quest to bring her real babies home.... This is a creepy story and although well written and compelling, left me feeling uncomfortable... Thanks to netgalley for an arc in return for my honest opinion.

Absolutely enjoyed from start to finish, u didn't want the book to end. Highly recommended, if you like books that keep you guessing and on the edge of your seat.

<b>4 Mar 2020 NG feedback/FYI:</b> Apologies for delayed feedback. Was double-checking my NG shelves against personal records when I recently noticed this title as requiring feedback.

I have a decline email for LITTLE DARLINGS , so not sure what happened. I’m wondering if I wished on UK site, and then requested on US site? But even if DL'd at some point, I no longer have a review copy due to HD failures.

FWIW, I eventually borrowed title from local library & very much enjoyed it—so much so that I gifted it to a few friends. LITTLE DARLINGS covered much more than originally expected = rated 4 stars.

Thanks so much!

The Changelings- My title for this book
This book taps into the oft repeated stories about fairy changelings. Where the fairies steal a human child & replace them with one of their own.
Although why the fairies should do this is never explained.
The first time I tried to read this book I found the initial chapters so creepy, I put the book away. This time, I read on.
The story is still creepy but I got hooked.
I actually lived in Sheffield in 1976, and well remember how dry it was, and now the Rivelin Dams' waters shrunk. I remember The fascination of seeing the drowned villages re-appear and how creepy they looked draped in water weed and crumbling.
This story leaves you with the distinct impression, that there is more to our world than the rational eye can see. Again with the ghost stor.
was the mother suffering from post-partum paranoia? Or was there more?

5 stars for creeping me out.

What a strange story. Thrilling, gripping and edgy. As I was pregnant whilst reading this it completely freaked me out. My heart was aching for the poor mother and skin crawled at the sane time. A chilling must read!

Creepy. But I loved it! Changelings are such an interesting tale. Put it in to the modern world and you have a fabulous story. As you can imagine everyone thinks the mum has gone mad.....has she?
5/5 on goodreads and Amazon

A very good read although very creepy. First book I’ve read by the author but I will be looking out for more books in future. It’s very rare ya read a thriller with a bit of a supernatural twist.

Do you ever start reading a book and think you know where it is going and then it absolutely doesn’t go anywhere near that? Well this is what Little Darlings did to me.

Said to have been inspired by the ghostly folktale ‘The Brewery of Eggshells’, where a mother becomes convinced her twins are not her own, Little Darlings offers a fresh perspective on modern motherhood and postnatal depression. We meet new mum Lauren, whom following a traumatic childbirth has all of her hopes and dreams shattered when she encounters a mother’s worst nightmare – someone is threatening to take her twins if she leaves them alone - or are they? Cleverly for me, I was never sure if this was the case or was Lauren constantly wanting attention or dreaming.

As you might expect, Lauren is terrified with fear, someone is threatening to take her newborn babies and she does the only thing she can think of to keep everyone safe - locks herself and her sons in the bathroom until the police arrive to investigate.

When DS Joanna Harper picks up the list of overnight incidents that have been reported and it is the report of an attempted abduction which ultimately catches her eye, but the only thing is that it was flagged as a false alarm just fifteen minutes later - why?

What gripped me with this novel is I just had no idea where it was going to go. Was Lauren telling the truth, was someone trying to take the twins, was it postnatal depression, was it all a dream.... no spoilers from me, but this is one book that grabs you, hauls you in and doesn’t let you forget it!

Little Darlings is the first novel by Melanie Golding, and what a debut! The writer takes us right inside the psyche of a new mother, one who is convinced her new born twin sons are under threat. It's obvious that the mother is suffering some sort of psychosis but Golding writes in such a way that the threat feels very real. So much so I actually had a physical shudder at the end, something that only the creepiest ghost stories can usually provoke in me. Sinister and alarming in parts, but also deeply affecting, I think this one will stay with me for awhile. I'm glad to see that there is a follow up to this in the offing.

A very enjoyable read.
A well written, page turning suspense novel with a sprinkle of the supernatural. What more could one ask for. Well perhaps a second novel with the same characters? I for one wouldn’t mind experiencing a bit more Harper.

I will definitely be keeping an eye on what the future holds for debut author Melanie Golding.

Well written, compelling and quite unsettling and creepy at times! It leaves you wanting afterwards and wondering what happened but it's open ended enough that you can make your own mind up. I found it very engaging and sinister - it draws you in from the very first page and is the perfect atmospheric page turner.

A well-written thriller/horror creepy fiction, bit slow to start up but when it starts…
Golding manages to put down a creepy feeling, atmospheric enjoyable read.

Grab it if you can!

This is a very creepy and clever story about a new mother who is convinced that her children are in fact changelings. I loved the mythology and folklore in the book, which is rather dark at times. A wonderful read for darker winter evenings but very sad too.

Thanks to NetGalley for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

More than a psychological thriller, no less than a masterpiece.

I could start this review echoing the many plaudits Melanie Golding has received for this novel. They are all true. Yes, the novel is creepy, certainly atmospheric and undoubtedly there is something of Sylvia Plath in the writing of Golding. These are all apt statements that conjure up certain elements of this wonderfully intelligent story that focuses on the anxieties of new mother, Lauren, and her concerns that her twin boys (well one twin) has been replaced with a changeling. The author, with a deftness of touch, intersperses the main narrative with vignettes of contemporary fairy tales once used to contextualise feelings of alienation from one's child, feelings of alienation that we now attribute to post-partum psychosis. The question in Lauren's case is a little more complicated. Has she been manipulated by a third-party into believing that one of her babies is a changeling, or does this belief stem from something more organic, like a psychiatric disorder? Whilst this is the core of the story, Golding expertly weaves, for me, this novel is about motherhood and our culturally inculcated assumptions about its 'naturalness'. In other words, "Little Darlings" is a thought-provoking, original novel about the social construction of motherhood refracted through the lens of a modern-day psychological thriller. I was reminded of Lionel Shriver's masterful "We Need To Talk About Kevin" when I read this book. Like Eva in "Kevin", Lauren experiences conflicted feelings of motherhood and describes the sheer violence and yes, violation of childbirth. It is a story of silence, feelings unspoken, in a society that still valorises the 'natural' mother. Of course, the universal desire to reproduce does not always come from our reptilian brain but rather from accepted ideology about the proper roles of the sexes. This is where "Little Darlings" is a superior novel about the human condition; it speaks of an absence of feeling as well as a feeling of absence, with the stories we tell ourselves about 'motherhood', as a singular monolithic entity, as its central component. Lauren, brilliantly conceptualised by Melanie Golding, can therefore be seen as a trojan horse for the social construction of motherhood and a plea for understanding from the many women who still suffer in silence under its inescapable burden.

Simply brilliant.
5 Star Review

Summary:
A terrifying encounter in the middle of the night leaves Lauren convinced someone is trying to steal her new-born twins. Desperate with fear, she locks herself and her sons in the bathroom until the police arrive.
When DS Joanna Harper picks up the list of reported overnight incidents, she expects the usual calls from drunks and wrong numbers. But then a report of an attempted abduction catches her eye. The only thing is that it was flagged as a false alarm just fifteen minutes later. But Harper chooses to investigate anyway.
There's nothing on the CCTV, and yet Lauren claims that the woman is still after her children. No one will listen to Lauren – except Harper. And now Harper must ask herself, is Lauren mad, or does she see something no one else can?

This is such a creepy book.... in a good way. You are never quite sure whether the protagonist, Lauren, is mentally ill or really has seen the mythical creatures she claims has been haunting her. Entwined with mythology and tales about changelings, some of which I knew, this book is creepy, chilling and heart wrenching. Melanie Golding is definitely one to watch