Little Darlings is a terrifying story that will haunt your thoughts long after you finish it. The original Grimm’s fairy tales are not sweet and innocent; they are bloody, violent, and scary. Folktales that have been told for hundreds of years can be the same. What if they were true? What if the horrible things that happened in them could actually happen to you?
Is getting lost in dark creepy stories one of your favorite things? Then Little Darlings could turn out to be one of your favorite books. As a caution though, if you’re pregnant, this might be one you want to pass on for now.
Lauren gives birth to twins, but while she is in the hospital, someone tries to switch her babies with theirs. But she is the only one in the hospital with twins. The doctors and everyone else, except for one cop, tells her that she is imagining things, that her babies are just fine. And she is convinced they are fine, but she is afraid to fall asleep, afraid that if she does, her two precious boys will be stolen. And one day, she falls asleep. When she wakes up, they are gone.
This book is about a mother’s worst nightmare. I was completely wrapped up in what Lauren was feeling and so thankful that neither of my babies was ever abducted, especially by someone that no one else could see or hear.
https.noiseresort.bandcamp.com/track/red-herring
There are so many red herrings—or are they?—in this terrifying tale: the river woman, a female friend of her husband, Lauren herself. Yes, there were times that I was convinced the mother was crazy and had done it herself.
Once you start this book, be prepared to stay up all night reading until you reach the end. On every page, there is an undercurrent of something evil and malicious going on.
I was sent a copy of this book by NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. This book is due to publish on April 30, 2019. If you want to experience the terror of Little Darlings, I’ve provided an Amazon link for you to pre-order your copy.
Amazon Link: Little Darlings
Favorite Sentences
“I don’t think I can trust what I think right now.”
Her eyes searched the undergrowth, every shadow morphing into clumps of hair, black rags, then back again to branches, leaves, nettles, and shadows.
There was a stillness here, too, a sense that etiquette required a certain kind of reverence, and that all behavior was being judged and examined, and found wanting.
Don’t they know, can’t they see that this kind of close scrutiny would drive anyone mad?
There was a darkness to this, something unknown, the tang of evil.
New Words Learned:
antenatal – prenatal
beetroot – the small, round, dark red root of a plant, eaten cooked as a vegetable, especially cold in salads
gyppo – (slang) a derogatory term for Gypsy
joss stick – a stick of dried perfumed paste, giving off a fragrant odour when burnt as incense
hosepipe – A flexible tube conveying water, used chiefly for watering plants
millpond – a pool formed by damming a stream to provide water to turn a millwheel
puerperal psychosis – a mental disorder sometimes occurring in women after childbirth, characterized by deep depression, delusions of the child’s death, and homicidal feelings towards the child
About the Author:
Melanie Golding is a graduate with distinction of Bath Spa University’s postgraduate creative writing program. She has been a farm hand, a factory worker, a child-minder, and a music teacher. Throughout all this—because and in spite of it—there was always the writing. In recent years she has won and been short-listed in several local and national story competitions. Little Darlings is her first novel.
https://www.melaniegolding.com/
