I always knew I wanted to be a mom. I love kids, so from my teenage years on, I have found ways to spend time with them. I was a babysitter as a teenager, a camp counselor and a Girl Scout Leader as an adult, a chaperone for church mission trips and field trips, and now I have become the “neighborhood mom” (at least that’s what I’m told 😊).

When I was younger, long before I met my husband, I said I wanted two kids and I wanted boys. My daughter was justifiably horrified when I told her that. I explained that girls are great and of course I would not trade her for anything. I carried her, I felt her moving, I spent so many sleepless nights (and days) rocking her to sleep and comforting her when she couldn’t sleep. I never knew I could love so much until I had a child of my own.

When you get to the teenage years with girls, though, there is SO…MUCH…DRAMA. She didn’t understand until she became a teenager and started to experience the drama that is middle school. She was talking about it one day, and I asked her, “Now do you see why I wanted boys?” and the answer was a resounding, “YES!”

Don’t get me wrong, I know there are challenges with boys too. My brother and sister-in-law had two boys before they had their daughter, and I think boys are easier when they’re younger (even though they’ll eat you out of house and home), and they get harder as they get older—and bigger. I just remember being a teenage girl and didn’t necessarily want to relive that stage of my life as a parent.

I was pretty old for a mom when we had our daughter, so instead of trying to quickly have another, my husband and I decided to count our blessings and be thankful for the child we have. My desire for two kids quickly morphed to being thrilled to have one. My husband has a daughter from his first marriage, so our daughter has a sibling. Despite the fact that she’s 20 years older and lives clear across the country, she is a wonderful sister.

But there are those who can’t (or don’t want to) have a biological child of their own, and for those, there is the alternative of adoption—and Gotcha Day, a celebration of the day a child is adopted into a family. I have a number of friends who either are adopted or have adopted, and I can’t help but feel that adopting a child is one of the most selfless things you can do for another human being. That day deserves a celebration, in addition to a birthday, because it’s the day the family becomes complete.

But I read a book recently where the expectant mother might want to forego letting someone have their Gotcha Day. 😲

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Book Review

⭐⭐⭐⭐
4 Stars for The Perfect Mother by Caroline Mitchell

364 pages
Publisher: Thomas & Mercer
Publication Date: January 14, 2020
I received a free advance copy of this title from NetGalley and Thomas & Mercer.

Publisher’s Description

She thought they wanted her baby. But they won’t stop there.

Roz is young, penniless and pregnant. All she wants is to be the perfect mother to her child, but the more she thinks about her own chaotic upbringing, the more certain she is that the best life for her baby is as far away as possible from her hometown in Ireland.

Determined to do the right thing, Roz joins an elite adoption service and can’t believe her luck. Within days she is jetting to New York to meet a celebrity power couple desperate for a child of their own. Sheridan and Daniel are wealthy and glamorous—everything Roz isn’t. Her baby will never go hungry, and will have every opportunity for the perfect life. But soon after Roz moves into their plush basement suite, she starts to suspect that something darker lurks beneath the glossy surface of their home.

When Roz discovers she isn’t the first person to move in with the couple, and that the previous woman has never been seen since, alarm bells start ringing. As the clock ticks down to her due date, Roz realizes her unborn baby may be the only thing keeping her alive, and that despite her best intentions, she has walked them both into the perfect nightmare….

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Caroline Mitchell will definitely be a new add to my favorite authors list! The Perfect Mother is perfectly dark and twisted, just the way I like it!! I have said before in What Do We Have on the DVR? that I am a huge fan of police procedurals (think Law & Order SVU, Criminal Minds), I find it easy to get engrossed in a book like this one. I can also totally see it as a movie similar to The Hand That Rocks the Cradle or Fatal Attraction.

Roz is the perfect victim—naïve, easily impressed, and desperately looking for an easy way out. The old adage “if it seems too good to be true, it probably is” should have been pounded into her head because she falls for Sheridan’s offer hook, line, and sinker…and pays the price. What she doesn’t know is will she pay the ultimate price?

I will not give anything away here because I don’t want to spoil the ending for anyone. A couple spoilers below to explain why 4 stars instead of 5. All in all, this was a great thriller that kept me reading and wanting to see if Roz would be able to get out of her mess!

***SPOILERS*** SPOILERS***SPOILERS***

There are two reasons I knocked this down to 4 stars from 5. The first I’m hoping was cleaned up in the final version since I received an advance edition. In the Prologue, Roz hears people coming down the lift to her basement suite and she’s preparing herself to fight them off. When the book catches up to that point in the story, Roz is waiting to hear the lift but then realizes the man and woman came down some stairs instead. I was so confused that I actually went back to the Prologue to reread it to see if I missed something.

The second thing I don’t like is that Sheridan’s friend Monica, who is actually a journalist chasing a story, doesn’t go to the police with her suspicions when she realizes that Roz is in Sheridan’s house. She has long suspected that Sheridan had something to do with another girl’s disappearance but she lets months go by and then crashes onto the scene to save the day? I just found it hard to believe that she would take the chance of waiting that long if she suspects that Roz will end up missing or dead.

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