Little Darlings by Melanie Golding

Little Darlings by Melanie Golding
Published in: 2019
Reviewed by: Book Worm
Rating: [★★★★]

This ARC was provided by HQ (via NetGalley) in exchange for an honest review.

Synopsis from Goodreads: Everyone says Lauren Tranter is exhausted, that she needs rest. And they’re right; with newborn twins, Morgan and Riley, she’s never been more tired in her life. But she knows what she saw: that night, in her hospital room, a woman tried to take her babies and replace them with her own…creatures. Yet when the police arrived, they saw no one. Everyone, from her doctor to her husband, thinks she’s imagining things.

A month passes. And one bright summer morning, the babies disappear from Lauren’s side in a park. But when they’re found, something is different about them. The infants look like Morgan and Riley―to everyone else. But to Lauren, something is off. As everyone around her celebrates their return, Lauren begins to scream, These are not my babies.

Determined to bring her true infant sons home, Lauren will risk the unthinkable. But if she’s wrong about what she saw…she’ll be making the biggest mistake of her life.

Compulsive, creepy, and inspired by some our darkest fairy tales, Little Darlings will have you checking―and rechecking―your own little ones. Just to be sure. Just to be safe.

Book Worm’s Thoughts: Well with a synopsis like that how was I ever going to resist this book? I was sucked in from the foreword where the author explains where she got her inspiration and that tales of changelings are found in cultures throughout the world. Personally I am sure I am a fairy princess who somehow ended up in a human family.

The most important part of the foreword for me was this:

“When changeling tales began, in a time before modern understanding of psychiatry, they would have provided an explanation of a rare kind of mental illness. They answered the question why would a mother think her children were changed even though, to everyone else they looked the same as they did before? This theory would also explain why after a while (or after a visit from the wise woman), everything was back to normal: puerperal psychosis is now known to be a temporary condition.”

This paragraph sets out the basis of the book, Lauren is convinced her twin sons have been changed while the rest of the world believes she is imagining it. What Golding does really well here is to make it possible for the reader to believe both views.

Each chapter starts with a quote about fairies and these are not your Tinkerbelle type of fairy these are the older and darker fairies that have existed in folklore for hundreds of years and these fairies don’t view humankind in a good light.

As the book progresses the reader is given more and more evidence for both sides of the argument and the ending leaves it open to the individual reader to decide what they believe happened. Regular readers will know what I believe…Changelings, obviously!

Who would like this? I would recommend this to anyone who enjoys real fairy tales not the sanitised Disney version of events, to anyone who wants to believe that humans are not alone and anyone who enjoys a fast paced thrilling story.

We want to hear from you! Have you read this book? What did you think?