psychological

Review: A Necessary End by Holly Brown

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All Adrienne wants is a baby.  Is that too much to ask?  Unable to have one of her own, she and husband Gabe have jumped through every hoop to make their dream come true.  And it almost happened once.  Now that chance is here once again, and Adrienne’s not about to let this one slip away.  She’ll do anything to make it happen.  Even if the birth mother’s demands seem a bit….unusual.

So Leah moves in with Adrienne and Gabe.  And they craft a most nontraditional agreement.  Not only will she live with them for a year following the birth of the baby, she’ll also wait until the end of that year to sign the baby over to them.  Oh and she gets an allowance of several hundred dollars a month.  If that’s what it takes, though, Adrienne will do it even if Gabe is a bit less enthusiastic.

When the baby is born, she goes to increasingly sneaky lengths to keep the baby from Leah.  Meanwhile, Leah’s starting to pull away from Adrienne and form more of a bond with Gabe.  And then the baby daddy shows up, throwing everything into a tailspin.

There’s so much more going on with this book.  Leah has a secretive past.  Something bad happened with the previous birth mother, although we don’t find out the full details until the very end.  I have to say, I didn’t like any of these characters.  But in this case, that’s okay.  I think that was the author’s point.  A great little suspense of a story!

~Thalia

Buy It Now:  A Necessary End

 

Review: The Children’s Home by Charles Lambert

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This was one weirdly confusing book. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing. It left me thinking for a bit, wondering exactly how I wanted to proceed with my review. Because it’s a story that’s not for everyone. Some will love it, some will not.

The story opens with the arrival of children. Nobody knows where they came from or how they got there. And that remains the case for the entirety of the story. But they arrive one after the other, some left on the doorstep and some simply wandering up to the door.

As owner of the sprawling estate, it falls on Morgan to decide what to do. As a hermit, he’s lonely from time to time and comes to enjoy the company of the children as does Engel, the caretaker. Who, by the way, also showed up mysteriously shortly before the children. Strange children are accompanied by strange happenings, of course.

So here is the overriding mystery of the story. But another equally compelling mystery concerns Morgan’s reclusiveness. What happened during his childhood to horribly scar him? Yet another intriguing tidbit the author drags out as long as possible.

I guess I’m not sure exactly how to describe this book. It’s good, but frustrating at the same time. I wanted more answers but in a way am glad they weren’t given to me. And if I’ve confused you even more, so goes The Children’s Home.

~Thalia

Buy It Now:  The Children’s Home