Review: Pretty Baby by Mary Kubica

Pretty Baby by Mary Kubica

Published: July 28, 2015

Publisher: MIRA
Challenge: 2015 SRC

Rating: 5/5

Synopsis

She sees the teenage girl on the train platform, standing in the pouring rain, clutching an infant in her arms. She boards a train and is whisked away. But she can't get the girl out of her head…

Heidi Wood has always been a charitable woman: she works for a nonprofit, takes in stray cats. Still, her husband and daughter are horrified when Heidi returns home one day with a young woman named Willow and her four-month-old baby in tow. Disheveled and apparently homeless, this girl could be a criminal—or worse. But despite her family's objections, Heidi invites Willow and the baby to take refuge in their home.

Heidi spends the next few days helping Willow get back on her feet, but as clues into Willow's past begin to surface; Heidi is forced to decide how far she's willing to go to help a stranger. What starts as an act of kindness quickly spirals into a story far more twisted than anyone could have anticipated.

My Thoughts

This is an emotional story of two women who have gone through hell and back but who have dealt with the aftermath in different ways. We meet Heidi who seems to have it all but who is going through things that she has buried deep within herself that she has never dealt with and that will slowly come to the surface in the most drastic way. She sees Willow who is a young girl with a baby daily on the train platform and has a soft spot for them and is determined to help them in any way possible. Heidi is the type who wants to help the world and everyone yet her personal life is in shambles. Her daughter doesn’t talk to her and her husband is focused on his career. She has made it her mission to help Willow and the baby no matter what her husband and daughter say but we later see she almost becomes obsessed and by the end we see why.

Willow is a girl who comes with excess baggage in more ways than one. We get the backstory on her life and we see how she goes from a family to a horrible foster family. She goes through things that no one much less a child has to go through yet she survives with the luck of a great friend. However ever since her family was torn apart she is determined to get some of it back but when she realizes she can’t she does something that might never be forgiven again.

This is the story of two women who are on the brink of disaster with twist and turns I never saw coming. I thought the story was going one way when I was thrown a curveball which I really thought made the story so much richer and definitely more unexpected which I love. This is one book that you will find more and more amazing as you read and peel back layers upon layers of storyline; it’s the ultimate gift that keeps on giving.