This is a character-driven mystery with lots of moral ambiguity, a hint of stalking, and an undercurrent of obsession. Good if you’re looking for slow-build tension and characters studies focused on motherhood. Took awhile to capture my interest but then I liked it until the ending.

 

Energy: Simmering. Cross. Dubious.

 

🐕 Howls: I was getting confused with the husbands/partners and who-was-who at first. It spends a lot of time hashing topics of motherhood, fertility, and how they tie in to womanhood, which at first was boring (but I don’t identify with maternal worries, so it might be a me thing); eventually I found it compelling to see what was motivating the mothers (and wannabe mothers). The ending was a little ‘that’s all?’ wrap up.

 

🐩 Tail Wags: Full of morally grey and unlikeable characters, decisions, secrets, and a low-key sense of unease. Characters making terrible choices (even when they have sympathetic motives).

 

Scene: 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 Set in London, England

Perspective: Two separate followers of a mommy influencer who suddenly removed all her blogs and stopped posting. One is a young single parent who escapes into the influencer’s posts given their frustrations with their own child. The other is in their 40s and really wants a baby but is facing fertility issues with their much younger partner. We also get snippets of perspective from the missing influencer’s spouse and comments/theorizing from online forums.

Timeline: 2017 leading up to the Christmas holidays 🎄

🔥 Fuel: Why has the mommy influencer stopped posting? Is she okay? Is the husband hiding something? How do the characters stories connect? What is one of them afraid of falling back into, and what secrets is the other hiding?

📖 Cred: Plausible

 

YouTube. Sidewalk. Playground. Pregnancy tests. Online posts.

 

Content Heads-Up: Postpartum depression. Alcohol (self-medicating, over-drinking). Male infertility. Fertility (IVF, ovulation tracking, stages of conception). Pregnancy (stages, experience). Infidelity. Paternity ambiguity. Sexual assault/rape (brief memory). Domestic abuse, intimate partner violence.

 

Rep: British. Cis. Hetero. Ambiguous skin tones.

 

📚 Format: Audible

 

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