Originally published: 2 May 2019

Author: Melanie Golding

Published by: HQ

Genre: Thriller

Pages: 324

Reading dates: 5-7 May 2019

“She’s got them under the water.

That’s where she lives.

That’s where she’d taken them.”

After giving birth to her twin boys Morgan and Riley, an exhausted Lauren is alone on the maternity ward. A terrifying encounter with a bedraggled woman in the middle of the night leaves her convinced that someone wants to steal her children. Lauren locks herself in the bathroom and calls the police.

“Choose one,” said the woman, “choose one or I’ll take them both. I’ll take yours and you can have mine. You’ll never know the difference.  I can make sure they look just the same. One’s fair.  Two is justice done.”

DS Joanna Harper notices the incident the following morning and despite the fact that it was been dealt with, something makes her look into what was reported as an attempted abduction, a bit closer. There is nothing on the CCTV and as the unit is secure, there is no way anyone could have gotten in.

Everyone is convinced Lauren imagined the encounter and she accepts this but on returning home becomes paranoid and housebound, desperate to keep her twins safe. On thinking she sees the same woman watching the house, Lauren again calls the police and DS Harper becomes sucked into Lauren’s spiral of fear.

This book got brought to my attention at the HQ Crime event I attended late last year and I was thrilled to be asked to be involved on the blog tour. And it was quite different to what I was expecting! Is Lauren actually suffering from some form of postnatal psychosis or are the events in this book actually bordering on the supernatural? It is a very clever and creepy story. When you hear from Lauren you become convinced everything she believes is true and that her babies are at risk. Yet when you see it from the outside, she surely must be mentally unstable.

A thrilling book, this was a quick read and highly original. Melanie Golding has a real talent for story telling. This book is still making me think several days after I finished it and that has to be a good thing right?

Little Darlings is loosely inspired by the ghostly folktale, The Brewery of Eggshells, where a mother becomes convinced her twins are in danger.

Thank you so much to Lucy Richardson at HQ Stories for providing a copy of this for the blog tour. Please check out all the other lovely bloggers below:

About the author:

Melanie Golding is a graduate of the MA in creative writing program at Bath Spa University, with distinction. She has been employed in many occupations including farm hand, factory worker, childminder and music teacher. Throughout all this, because and in spite of it, there was always the writing. In recent years she has won and been shortlisted in several local and national short story competitions. Little Darlings is her first novel, and has been optioned for screen by Free Range Films, the team behind the adaptation of My Cousin Rachel.

Twitter: https://twitter.com/mk_golding