“Rosemary’s Baby” meets Ashley Audrain’s “The Push,” this story is a dark & terrifying look at the journey to motherhood. It’s weird and whimsical and will definitely make you question your sanity at times. The author’s writing style is fantastic. And I loved how this surreal story is rooted in such realistic circumstances.

The quote on the front cover touts this novel as being “the feminist update to Rosemary’s Baby we all needed” and I couldn’t agree more.

4 ⭐️

Delicate Condition—Danielle Valentine

On the surface, Anna Victoria Alcott seems to have finally achieved it all: a perfect marriage, great friends, and a successful acting career. But deep down is a gaping emptiness taking over Anna’s life that she’s desperate to fill by having a baby. Her and Dex have been trying for years but all attempts have been unsuccessful. But Anna knows this time the IVF will take, that they will finally both get what they’ve always wanted. They have to. She has to.

And just when it seems like she’s finally getting her wish, life decides to rip the star she wished on right out of the sky. A miscarriage—but how when she can still feel something inside her? How, when she still gets weird cravings and experiences all the pregnancy symptoms? Does Anna want this enough to imagine it all, or is there something more sinister at play—like perhaps a Satanic cult that wants her baby to he the spawn of the devil himself?
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Well I can safely say that I’m NEVER having kids after reading this book! Valentine turned pregnancy into an absolute nightmare. Think Rosemary’s Baby but if it was Jennifer Check who was pregnant—literal nightmare fuel! I was hooked from the first page. All the blood, the hallucinations, and the conspiracies sucked me straight in like a Reddit rabbit hole that I needed to fall all the way out of. Then there was the bloody hospital scene, the raccoon at the pool, and the teeth/blood/hair fiasco—all of which were fantastically written and played out like a horror movie. This was a definite win for me and should be for all horror lovers everywhere!

Thank you to NetGalley, Danielle Valentine & Sourcebooks Landmark for an arc of Delicate Condition in exchange for an honest review. This review is wholly my own (except quotations) & may not be reproduced.

“Anna Alcott is desperate to be pregnant. But as she tries to balance her increasingly public life with a grueling IVF journey, she starts to suspect that someone is going to great lengths to make sure her pregnancy never happens. Crucial medicines are lost. Appointments get swapped without her knowledge. And even when she finally manages to get pregnant, not even her husband is willing to believe that someone's playing a twisted game with her.

When the increasingly cryptic threats drive her out of her Brooklyn brownstone and into hiding in the cold, gray ghost town that is the Hamptons in the depths of winter, Anna is almost at the end of her rope.

Then her doctor tells her she's had a miscarriage—except Anna's convinced she's still pregnant, despite everything the grave-faced men around her claim. Could it be that her mind is playing tricks on her? Or is something more sinister at play? As her symptoms become ever more horrifying and the sense of danger ever more present, Anna can't help but wonder what exactly she's carrying inside of her...and why no one will listen when she says something is horribly, painfully wrong.”

This one was highly recommended by a friend and was getting a lot of hype, but it just wasn’t the book for me. It wasn’t bad – it just wasn’t for me, therefore, I’m rating down the middle with a 3/5 Stars.

Expected Publication Date: August 1, 2023

This book was extremely disturbing, more than I anticipated it being. I will say that it was incredibly atmospheric, but I really didn’t want to be in this one! The story had a quick start, like from the very beginning, which in a way is good because it didn’t have that slow buildup like some stories do, but also not-so-good because the reader is just thrown into the story all at once without the background to make it make sense from the get-go. You do get it the more you read, but again, this just wasn’t for me.

The twists & turns were well done, as was the ending. Anna, however, was not a character that I really liked at all.

I do think a lot of readers will enjoy this novel. I think this is one that is just going to vary from person-to-person.

Between the eerie premise and the glowing reviews, I was so excited to read Delicate Condition. However, I struggled to connect with the story. One of the biggest challenges for me was the immediate gaslighting — the reader doesn't see a slow build to the tension, but rather is immersed in it from the start. It made it hard to understand the wider context of the story and how off things truly are.