What a remarkable read! Intense and thought provoking.

Pretty Baby

Mary Kubica

Harlequin (Australia), TEEN / MIRA

MIRA

ISBN: 9781743690352

Description:

Mary Kubica — bestselling author of The Good Girl — delivers a stunning new psychological thriller about a chance encounter that sparks an unrelenting web of lies where a chance encounter sparks an unrelenting web of lies…

Heidi Wood has always been a charitable woman: she works for a non-profit, takes in stray cats. Still, her husband and daughter are horrified when Heidi comes home one day with a teenage girl named Willow and her four-month-old baby in tow. Dishevelled and apparently homeless, this girl could be a criminal — or worse. But despite her family’s objections, Heidi invites Willow and the baby to take refuge in their home.

Heidi spends the next few days helping Willow get back on her feet, but as clues into Willow’s past begin to surface, Heidi is forced to decide how far she’s willing to go to help a stranger. What starts as an act of kindness quickly spirals into a story far more twisted than anyone could have anticipated?

My View:

Mary Kubica is an author to include on you must read list. I loved her first novel – The Good Girl, and this new book is as powerful and surprising; a complex yet not complicated narrative, characters that will affect your emotions and prompt you to think about issues that surround us daily, issues perhaps we have been desensitised to. Kubica makes us look with fresh eyes. Mary Kubica has the real talent of being able to wrap up contemporary issues in complex engaging plots whilst insidiously pricking your conscience and holding your emotions to siege. This is an outstanding, absorbing read.

For me there were many levels to this narrative – there is the obvious – a story of child abuse, homelessness loosely knotted together with issues surrounding other health and welfare issues yet for me the strongest and most powerful sub story here was one about the defining of female identity with reproduction and family. This narrative is the perfect vehicle to stimulate such a discussion – and Heidi Wood is the perfect character to lead this discussion. A masterfully written!