Baby Doll
"What a compulsive read! A brilliant first novel that kept me transfixed and entertained until the very last page." -- Tess Gerritsen, New York Times bestselling author of Die Again Escape was just the beginning. Held captive for eight years, Lily has grown from a teenager to an adult in a small basement prison. Her daughter Sky has been a captive her whole life. But one day their captor leaves the deadbolt unlocked. This is what happens next... to Lily, to her twin sister, to her mother, to her daughter -- and to her captor. For fans of Gone Girl and Girl on the Train, BABY DOLL is the most tense thriller you will read this year.
Hollie Overton sure knows how to grab your attention from the first chapter and keep a firm grip on it through the end.
You get everything you need about the crime at the very beginning of the book. You know a young girl was kidnapped, held against her will for years, was impregnated and one day she and her daughter escape. You are also told who kidnapped her and how he is apprehended right away.
Really this book is about examining the consequences not just on the person who had to undergo that ordeal but the family, friends and community that were left behind in the wake of such a tragic event. In that sense it’s an interesting scope of the human psyche, how to heal, stages of grief, and the denial people put themselves in when they can’t accept the truth. Overton did a credible job flushing out the psychological tidal wave of disease that occurs with criminal activity and its aftermath.
This isn’t the kind of book where you’re waiting to find out who the criminal is, how/why they did the crime and how they’ll get caught so it’s not a normal mystery HOWEVER there is one hell of a shocking twist towards the end that has to be read to be believed.
My only complaint is that I wish she could’ve used a more first person perspective so we could feel what the characters were feeling and seeing particularly as this book was ripe for that the way she wrote it with altering character chapters.
Thank you to Netgalley and Redhook Books for allowing me to review this book.
*synopsis and pic from netgalley.com