Are you the type of reader that’s affected by book hype? If an upcoming release is getting a lot of attention, does it make you want to read it even more? It’s ok to admit it affects you, that’s why they call it ‘buzz’, it’s so persuasive! Woman on the Edge by Samantha M. Bailey is one of those books; it’s been on the bestseller list since it was released at the end of last year here in Canada and lots of fellow book bloggers on twitter loved it, so I was desperate to find an opening in my reading schedule to fit this one in. It’s hard for any book to live up to this excitement but once I picked it up I raced through it in two days, so I’m relieved to say it was worth the wait.
It begins with a haggard woman shoving her baby into Morgan Kincaid’s arms in a subway station, begging her to keep her child safe. Stunned, Morgan tries to question the stranger, but before she gets the chance, the mother jumps in front of a train, dying instantly. Not just an innocent bystander, Morgan’s got a shady reputation because of her ex-husband’s unethical business dealings, and when it’s revealed the baby’s mother Nicole was a self-made millionaire whose child is set to inherit her wealth, Morgan becomes a murder suspect. There are no shortage of twists, motives and potential suspects in this book, and although I had an inkling of who couldn’t be trusted early on, I still enjoyed the race to the finish and final reveal.
Interrupting Morgan’s present-day nightmare is Nicole’s story, detailing her descent into madness and paranoia only weeks after her baby is born. Although she’s clearly suffering from postpartum depression and psychosis, there are other malevolent forces at work. Once Morgan learns Nicole’s identity, Morgan ignores her lawyer’s warnings and decides to investigate Nicole’s last few weeks alive, desperate to discover what drove the mother to suicide.
Both Nicole and Morgan have been treated unfairly in their lives, and even though Nicole is a self-made success story, her postpartum experience is the most horrifying part of this entire book, probably because it’s such a common but unspoken part of motherhood. Granted Nicole’s symptoms are much more severe than most, but most Moms will be able to relate to the terror of having a newborn baby upend your life. In fact, if you’ve had a baby in the past few months, I’d recommend avoiding this book until you’ve had a few solid months of good sleeps, you don’t want this creepy story seeping into your subconscious.
The book is quite short so it’s light on character development and heavy on plot. But for those looking for a good thriller to keep your eyes glued to the page, an in-depth character study isn’t what you’re interested in anyway. Almost every person involved has a motive or a suspicious past, which is my favourite aspect of this book. I wanted to get to the end to see which person was lying, and as it turns out, all of them are, at one point or another. Still, the gradual truths that come out are believable, so I never felt like Bailey was stretching the possibilities of reality. And, thank god, there is no unreliable narrator in this book, which we’ve been trained to expect when any novel has a titular female character.
Many parallels are drawn between Nicole and Morgan, but the paranoia they both share is what builds tension and drives the narrative, their backstories becoming increasingly less important the further along we go. The atmosphere of this novel is its strongest suit; many authors are working in this genre but so few get it right, so Bailey’s success is clearly due to her steady and propulsive plotting.
Sometimes when a book is really hyped out, it makes me not want to read it…but maybe that says more about me than anything else! I have seen quite a bit of buzz around this and I’m glad it lives up to it. And I’m glad to see postpartum depression dealt with in a novel, even if it’s more extreme than average.
I was wondering if the author would use postpartum depression as an excuse to make the narrator unreliable, and I’m glad she did not. I’m tired of seeing women posited as unreliable because we’ve been fighting a history that has also said we are “hysterical.”
Yes, that’s very true. Emotional and depressed doesn’t mean wrong.
TOTALLY! yes thank god she didn’t use that, ugh that would have been really frustrating to read about
totally, the more postpartum is dealt with in forms of entertainment, that more accepting people will (hopefully) become of it, inviting other women to come forward with their story!
I hadn’t even heard of this book but it certainly sounds like a page-turner! Sometimes I just want a good thriller to escape into and characterization doesn’t matter quite so much.
I believe it was just released in the U.S. which may be why you hadn’t heard of it yet-hopefully it makes a big splash down there too 🙂
Hurrah to no unreliable female narrator! I do get caught up in buzz sometimes, and this one has caught my eye, though tragically I’m so behind with review copies at the moment I’m having to be very strict with myself. Still, I might have to try to fit it in… 😀
Awww, I love a good unreliable narrator story and I’m so frustrated that ONE book and all its wanna-be-just-like-it friends (I won’t name it, in case anyone hasn’t read it by now) have ruined that for the good storytellers out there who want to rely on humanity’s unreliability. I’m glad you enjoyed this one – the pacing does sound like it’s perfect, either for balancing out other reading or simply for escaping in these strange days.
It’s funny, I’m always irritated to see when an author relies too heavily on the unreliable narrator thing, but it’s not impossible to use it and still write a really good book-it just can’t be the only twist, it has to be a part of something bigger…