Katherine finally has it all. She's spent her entire life striving for perfection—obsessing over her spotless home, maintaining her pristine reputation, building her perfect family—and her hard work has finally paid off. After seven difficult years of trying (and failing) to conceive, Katherine gives birth to Rose, her IVF miracle child, and at last has the one thing she's wanted most of all. But one thing isn't quite perfect. Rose's pale skin doesn't match Katherine's complexion, and an irritating doubt begins to grow in Katherine's mind.
Tess never got the happy ending she wanted. She underwent IVF at the same clinic as Katherine, but after finally conceiving, Tess's daughter was stillborn. Now, nearly one year later, she's approaching rock bottom. Consumed by her grief and without hope for the future, Tess is divorced, broke, and stuck in a dead-end job beneath her skillset.
But shortly before Rose's first birthday, Katherine and Tess get a call from the fertility clinic: Their eggs were switched.
As Katherine's carefully planned life begins to crumble around her, Tess finally sees the glimmer of hope she needed to get her life back on track. Motherhood has always been their dream, and neither woman is prepared to share that claim over Rose. It will take a tense custody battle to decide who deserves to be Rose's mother, but it will also push them to the brink.
I don’t have any children right now, but I’ve been in the “role” of a mother a few times and just those glimpses were enough to let me know how intense those feelings can be. And this book asks one important and almost unanswerable questions — what really makes someone a mother?
It delves into the painful, shattering realities of loss and parenthood, but also into identity, race, family, the expectations women face and the countless parts of a person that make them feel they belong and it’s all done in such a thoughtful and delicate way that it still felt warm and reassuring despite the deeply emotional content and suffocating intensity at times.Our two narrators were women who’d been through hell and back — and whilst at times their behaviour is erratic, aggressive and chaotic it’s clear how they’ve reached this breaking point. Katherine seems superficial at first, cold and clinical but slowly opens up to us and Tess feels in a daze, haphazard but as we get to know them both we see there’s so much more and bond with them both in their own way.
The story moves a slow but steady pace, letting both narrators share their sides of the story and giving us a look into their lives before it all goes wrong. I can’t say I “enjoyed” reading this per se, but it definitely left an impression that will stay with me for some time from a powerful voice.
- Hold My Girl will be available from 10th October with Sourcebooks. I received an advanced reviewers copy of this title.
- Please check content warnings before reading as this title contains subjects that may upset or trigger including infant death, loss, infertility and infidelity.
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