Twisty and Addictive

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Author: T J Stimson
Publisher: Avon (April 18, 2019)

• Paperback: 416 pages
• Kindle: 292 pages
• Click To Read A Sample

Description

My name is Lydia. I’m 12 years old. I’m not an evil person, but I did something bad.

My name is Maddie. I’d never hurt my son. But can I be sure if I don’t remember?

With three children under ten, Maddie is struggling. On the outside, she’s a happy young mother, running a charity as well as a household. But inside, she’s exhausted. She knows she’s lucky to have to have a support network around her. Not just her loving husband, but her family and friends too.

But is Maddie putting her trust in the right people? Because when tragedy strikes, she is certain someone has hurt her child – and everyone is a suspect, including Maddie herself…

The women in this book are about to discover that looks can be deceiving… because anyone is capable of terrible things. Even the most innocent, even you.

This is the story of every mother’s worst fear. But it’s not a story you know… and nothing is what it seems.

My Thoughts

Maddie, the mother of three young children, is exhausted. While some babies are easy to care for, her two-month-old isn’t one of those babies. He demands much of her attention. And to make matters worse, Maddie is experiencing black-outs, where she can’t remember clearly.

Not only is she trying to care for her family, but Maddie also runs a charity. With lack of sleep at night, due to feeding the baby, she is feeling less and less capable of handling her daily chores. Her husband has responsibilities at work so he can’t be as much help as he’d like. Maddie finds herself quickly running out of steam and at times even thinking things she’d never want to be spoken.

In the middle of the night, as Maddie sits in a chair feeding her baby, she jolts awake from one of her blackouts. For a moment her heart stops as she realizes she is no longer holding Noah. But she quickly finds that he has slipped from her arms and wedged himself between her and the arm railing of the chair. The red markings on his head make it apparent that something has happened to him, but to admit it to her husband might look like she isn’t able to handle the children.

Since she hadn’t been able to take care of one of her earlier children because of postpartum depression, she doesn’t want her husband to think it’s happening again. She wants to be trusted now. She can’t have him or her mother thinking there is a problem, and she is sure there isn’t. Unless you call blackouts a problem. And that does concern her.

But seeing that the baby is just fine, except for the red streaks on his head, she chooses to tell a little white lie. That she found the baby wedged near the bars of his crib. However, had she known that small lie would come back to haunt her, I’m sure she would have rethought that lie.

You see, it’s only a short while later that Noah, her newest baby, is found dead in his crib. Is his mother going mad? After all, doesn’t madness run in her family?

This page-turner will keep you guessing until the end.

Thank you to NetGalley for this ARC and for allowing my honest review.

What Concerned Me

Readers should be aware that at the same time this story is unfolding, there are chapters interspersed about a little girl named Lydia. Lydia experiences acts of violence and neglect by her mother. Though this story is told as gently as possible, it is still somewhat upsetting.

Only later will the chapters about Lydia make sense, so don’t worry. Just read the two stories until they work themselves into one.

Conclusion

 The twists and turns aren’t totally inconceivable and the book had me flipping through the pages from the getgo. This is a captivating read that gets an easy 5-stars from me. I say yes. Give this book a try.

T. J. Stimson

Tess Stimson is the British author of ten novels and two non-fiction books. Many are translated into dozens of languages.

Her first job after graduating from St Hilda’s College, Oxford was as a news trainee with ITN (Independent Television News). She reported and produced regional and world stories, traveling to hotspots and war-zones all over the globe.

In 2002, she was appointed Professor of Creative Writing at the University of South Florida and moved to the US. She now lives and works in Vermont with her husband, Erik, their three children, and (at the last count) two cats, three fish, one gerbil and a large number of bats in the attic.