Lauren has just given birth to identical twin boys. Riley and Morgan. The following night she hears a woman singing next to her ward and requests her to stop in case the babies wake up except she has dire plans to kidnap the babies and replace with her own. When security arrives they decide it's just post traumatic stress and doesn't it pursue it further except the woman seems to have followed her home and continues to stalk her. One month after secluding herself and the babies at home she decides to finally go out and be with her friends. Unfortunately she decides to take a nap right outside the park and when she wakes up the babies are gone. Except within an hour they are found. But now Lauren suspects they aren't hers. That the weird woman replaced her babies for Laurens. Despite no evidence for any of this Lauren decides to take the ultimate way out except is this happening for real or is it something else?

The book started with great potential. The first few chapters are pretty graphic in terms of childbirth. It can make some queasy. But I was shocked to see a woman all alone right after childbirth with twins no less to fend for herself in the hospital. I don't know how it works like that but with experience I can say it's not something anyone will do in real life. Even the nurses didn't seem to care when they should have been guiding the new mom for breastfeeding. Anyhoo whatever works for the author. The part where this strange woman is introduced things do get creepy and you can't help but feel like closing the book and not read. Detective Jo Harper does try to investigate the distress call but gets no leads. Once home things drag on. Even after the kids are kidnapped and found, the author continuously goes back and forth on folk lore and PTSD. The reader is constantly teased as to what's real and what's not.

What further confuses me is Harper does find evidence to what Lauren claimed yet the story switches back to her depression bout. Her husband Patrick has taken paternity leave to look after them. Except all he does is tell her to look after them herself as he will be back to work soon and she needs the practice. I abhorred that character and not to mention the cheating which never made to the spotlight either. Both Patrick and Harper acknowledge there's something wrong and that Lauren maybe right about the babies been switched and yet they change their minds in the snap of a finger.

To conclude, I will say this, Lauren was a multifaceted character. She may have been suffering PTSD or she may have been saying the truth but you feel for her no matter what. I liked how you never know what's happening in terms of Lauren's reality but I was disappointed by the authors take on this hugely potential storyline. It felt like she wanted to make it all things at once and didn't know what to include and exclude. I liked how the author throws light on post traumatic stress disorder that many new mothers go through and also the inclusion of folklore as a medium to expand the story. But the ending was just blah. Nevertheless worth a read.

Thank you to NetGalley and publisher for my review copy.

4.5 Stars

Lauren Tranter was a new mother to twin boys. Unfortunately, her joy quickly turned to horror when the unthinkable happened. From that point on, she lived in constant fear, blurring the line between reality and the own mind. Her only hope was put on Detective Sergeant Jo Harper who might be willing to see things on a different perspective.

I’m not a mother but could absolutely relate to Lauren’s predicament. Her terror and distrust were palpable, and I understood her actions and motivations.

I loved how atmospheric the book is. Plenty of times I felt the chill of the unknown and unexplained. I also appreciated the incorporation of dark fairytales/folklore, which added dimensions into the story.

I enjoyed the premise of the book which tackled a real-life issue and how it was presented realistically with a twist. I usually liked open-ended conclusion, however, this book had too many unanswered questions that lessened the impact.

Little Darling is an eerie tale of a mother’s worst nightmare. It would appeal to readers who are interested in a psychological thriller with elements of supernatural.

"Little Darlings" by Melanie Golding.

My first time reading that author.

WOW!
I am not a mother but I could feel the fear, the horror, the emotions...

Well written, engaging, captivating, stunning, creepy... I was into it from page 1!

I can't wait to see that as a movie!

Thank you to NetGalley and Crooked Lane Books for the ARC of this book. This is my honest review. All opinions are my own.

I’m not usually a fan of fairy tales or books/movies which incorporate fairy tales but I seriously loved this book.

Lauren has just had twin boys. After a difficult birth, she is exhausted and receiving limited help from the midwives and her husband. Whilst still in hospital, a woman attacks her and, believing the woman intends to take her babies, she locks herself away in the bathroom and calls the police.

Jo Harper is a police officer who, for reasons of her own, is drawn to the 999 call and decides to go and interview Lauren. While hospital staff and Lauren’s husband believe Lauren is delusional and was suffering from sleep deprivation, Harper remains unconvinced. A few weeks later, both women’s fears are justified when the babies are abducted.

Harper is a likeable character and her scenes read almost police procedural. Despite Lauren’s belief that some supernatural being had taken the children, I kept thinking there was a more conventional kidnapper for Harper to discover.

In fact, I was impressed with how Golding overall kept her story firmly on realistic ground despite weaving fairy tales, folklore and general creepiness into the plot. As a reader I was completely captivated and kept reading frantically to see how everything would be resolved. The book definitely kept me on the edge of my seat.

I’ve found a lot of books of late are great at building tension but then end on a dull whimper. I’m happy to report that I loved the ending of Little Darlings. I can’t really think of anything I disliked about the book really. Solid 5 out of 5.

I gave this book a 4 star rating.

I have to admit that this story started a bit slow for me. It wasn't that the first part was bad, just seemed to take a while for the story to really get good-and good it got. (Is that the proper way to say that? ;) )

So the story starts with Lauren giving birth to her twin boys, which are name Morgan and Riley. While in the hospital, a "woman" comes into her room and says that she wants to swap her twins for Lauren's twin. Of course Lauren freaks out and ends up calling the cops.

I don't want to say too much and give anything away, but this is one story where you don't know what it real and what isn't. Lauren sees the woman from the hospital stalking her house, but everyone tells her that no one is there and you can slowly see her lose her grasp on reality.

I really did not like her husband, Patrick. To me he is a total jerk when the babies first come home. He goes to sleep in the spare bedroom so he can get sleep without being woke up by the twins because he can't function without his sleep. Then later he demands that Lauren get out of the house and have play dates even though Lauren doesn't feel ready for it.

Joanne Harper is from the police department and tries to figure out the whole attempted abduction of the twins. The only part I really didn't like her was that she basically thought she could do whatever she wanted without her supervisor's permission. It almost felt like she thought everyone would just bend over backwards for her.

Overall I really enjoyed the whole changeling part of the story. It really kept you guessing the whole second half of the book and I would recommend it to people who enjoy a kidnapping story with a slight paranormal feel to it.

4 Stars!

Little Darlings is a a page-turning thriller about Lauren Tranter, a new mom of twin boys. While she’s in the hospital, she encounters a woman trying to steal her twin babies. After that, she’s sure she sees the woman, following her, showing up at her house… but does she really?

As a mother of young children, this book was very relatable. I felt connected to Lauren, and I shared many of her frustrations (especially with her husband - he drove me nuts!) Her paranoia is understandable to me, but I was always wondering if what she was experiencing was real or if it was just in her head. The author did a great job keeping me in suspense!

There are some supernatural aspects to the story, and I personally loved it. I’ve heard many stories about changelings and how they were “handled” in history, so the snippets of changeling lore really added to the experience. Don’t be turned away if you aren’t into supernatural things— the story is great and while there is a supernatural spin to the story, it is still grounded in reality.

I highly recommend it!

Lauren Tranter has just given birth to twin boys, Morgan and Riley, after a difficult birth. She’s completely exhausted. When a strange, threatening woman comes to her hospital room carrying a basket with her own two weird babies and tries to convince Lauren to exchange babies, no one believes Lauren. They think she’s imagining things. But Lauren is convinced that this filthy woman is trying to steal her babies, leaving her “changelings” in their place. When Lauren gets out of the hospital, she hides away at home, leaving her husband baffled. When she finally ventures outside with the babies a month later, she falls asleep in the park, awakening to find her babies are gone. They’re soon discovered but Lauren is sure that these are not her babies.

Goodness, this one had my spine perpetually in chills throughout its reading. It was so realistic and frightening but I couldn’t look away. It completely held me in its spell. I don’t often given thrillers 5 stars but this one was a step above the usual. I could completely relate to Lauren and suffered her fears right alongside her. As horrifying as it was to believe her babies were going to be stolen and not having anyone believe her and then finally having them taken, how much more horrifying for her to believe that these were not her babies but rather the creatures left by the scary woman. This just escalates in suspense. And there are plenty of twists that have you wondering whether Lauren is correct in her convictions or not which really leave you on the edge of your seat.

What I absolutely loved, too, is that the author included snippets of fairy tales/poems throughout her book, such as from “The Stolen Child” by Yeats and from several poems from different authors called “The Changeling”. This added to the overall darkness of this compelling book. This fact that this is the author’s debut is quite surprising.

Most highly recommended.

When Lauren Tranter gives birth to her baby twins, an incident severely shakes her: a woman went into her room and tried to swap the children. Since neither the nurses nor the rest of the hospital staff saw anybody enter or leave, Lauren’s statement is dismissed as a hallucination by an exhausted mother. Life with Morgan and Riley is hard for her after she has returned home. Her husband more or less leaves her alone and with twins who cry and want to be fed 24 hours a day, Lauren feels dead-tired and hardly leaves the bed anymore. When one afternoon she finally finds the strength to meet some friends in a park, the worst case happens: her baby boys are abducted. Luckily, they are quickly returned, but Lauren is sure: these are not her boys, the evil woman has exchanged them.

Melanie Golding’s thriller plays with the most awful thing that could happen: the abduction of your children. Having two little precious peas whom you would kill for endangered is surely the worst that could happen to a mother. Yet, all though the novel, there is some nagging since you can never be absolutely sure if you should trust Lauren or if she actually is suffering from some mental disorder.

What I liked especially about the novel is the combination of some dark fairy tales with hallucinations or mental disorders. Everybody knows that tales are not true and the magic that happens there is just an invention. Nevertheless, they are fascinating also for adults and even against better knowledge, you sometimes wish for them to become real. Yet, there is this tradition of the gloomy tales that mainly frighten you, even as an adult, and I always wondered where those stories come from and why they outlived generations even though they are hard to endure. “Little Darlings” cleverly rewrites this tradition but does not provide a finite answer to some big questions. You conclude the novel with a slight thrill – wonderfully done.

A beautifully creepy albeit sad mystery/thriller. Golding incorporates aspects of magical realism, shock and awe, and folklore ( the Welsh fairy tale A Brewery of Eggshells) into her story about Lauren Tranter, who had just given birth to twin boys. The story comes down to this: have Lauren's newborn twin babies been swapped with changelings or is she suffering some form of postpartum psychosis? The read to find out will have you flipping pages as quickly as possible!

I’m feeling really ambivalent about this book, hence no stars. The concept of the story is absolutely fascinating, and the details are well done. Trigger warnings abound here with abductions and child endangerment. I wasn’t a huge fan of the characters. They’re pretty darn unlikable, and so it was hard to keep going at points.

Ugh! I’m still super conflicted. I don’t think I liked this one, but I HAD TO KNOW WHAT HAPPENED. Read at your own risk, LOL.

Such a twisty, creepy, wonderful book! I also really appreciated the accurate representation of postpartum depression and anxiety. I felt like I was reading my own thoughts on paper!

This book was too strange and disturbing for me. There were some pretty gross and nasty parts. And I was confused and lost, therefore pretty bored. No thanks to the movie being made from it!!!

I dnf’d this at 7% and I’m so sad about that. The 7% I read was just so graphic, with the process of childbirth, post-birth bleeding, and ripping stitches described in explicit detail. I’m not saying that’s a bad thing at all, it’s just not something I can push myself to read through at this point in time.

Having said that, this book still intrigues me greatly and I hopefully will come back to it another time in the future and read it in full.

Little Darlings successfully combines two entwined stories. New mom Lauren knows she was threatened in the hospital, by a scary woman who threatened to take away Lauren's newborn twins. And then--the twins are taken, and though they are soon found, they're...different. And only one police officer seems to think her story has any merit. Little Darlings meshes the stories of the mother and the officer, and the twisty path to a satisfying, bittersweet resolution makes for quite a page-turner. One of the big themes here is that nothing is necessarily what it seems, and that goes for the entire conceit of this changeling narrative.

„Little Darlings“ is a creepy read. It keeps you guessing whether Lauren has mental issues or is haunted by a kind of gruesome fairy.

Lauren just gave birth to twin sons. While in hospital and still overwhelmed with the birth experience and feeding two hungry babies she has a weird experience. She sees a woman with twins who offers her a deal. She wants to swap one of the babies. If Lauren refuses she will take both of her sons. But nobody saw that women and so nobody believes her. But this encounter leaves Lauren terribly scared. After returning home she refuses to leave the house. When her not very helpful husband and some friends are growing more and more concerned about her mental state she finally manages to get to the nearby lake for a walk with her babies. But there something happened that seems to fulfill Lauren’s greatest fears.

At first I was a bit concerned if this book would turn out to be a good one for me. The birth and the aftermath of it were described very detailed. Also there was a lot about breastfeeding twins and caring for them. This went on for quite a while because Lauren does not much else. The pace is slow and the tension is not very strong. After the accident at the lake it gets a bit more interesting because the author manages to keep you guessing what happend. Is there something sinister and supernatural happening or is it just Lauren’s imagination?

The book is an easy read. I found it a bit slow because of all the maternal problems which are described extensively. But I liked how it kept me guessing.

Thank you to NetGalley and Crooked Lane Books for an ARC of this book.

I did not want to but this book down. I was hooked from beginning to end. The pacing was consistent throughout. The atmosphere of the book gave me the creeps in the best way. It leaves you wondering if the mother has post partum psychosis or if there is some other more sinister thing going on. I can see how some will not agree with the use of a new mother and her mental health but that is the point of the storyline.

I would recommend this is you are in to horror thrillers. I was great!

This was a very good book. It leaves one wondering about the sanity of the main character. Was what I read real or was she crazy? It was an intriguing read and at times downright creepy.

Set in present-day England, and spanning the first five weeks following a traumatic childbirth, Lauren Tranter’s hopes and dreams of being a new mom are shattered when she encounters a mother’s worst nightmare—someone is threatening to take her twins if she leaves them alone. The novel ranges from the stark loneliness of returning home after birth to the confines of a psychiatric unit, as the reader is forced to question if Lauren is mad, or does she know something we don’t?

"Changeling- a child believed to have been secretly substituted by fairies for the parents' real child in infancy."


The story starts towards the end of Lauren's long labor which heralds the arrival of twin babies Morgan and Riley. Lauren spends several days in the hospital with them, wondering when her "love" for her babies will appear. Lauren is exhausted, inexperienced, and gets no real support from her husband Patrick, at any time in the story. I dare say that Patrick turns out to be a right awful prick who for even one moment in time had he took the time to actually understand what his wife was experiencing, perhaps the events that happened would have not transpired.

This story actually follows two distinct characters: Lauren Tranter, and Detective Sergeant Joanna Harper. It is Harper who we not only meet in the beginning of the book, but follow to the end of the book as she tries to piece together what is really happening to Lauren, and whether or not she experiences a phenomenon called puerperal psychosis or if there is something supernatural at play here. How else would you explain the behavior of Lauren from the moment she gives birth to twins Riley and Morgan, and later believes that someone is attempting to steal her babies and replace them with changelings?

Terrified for her babies, Lauren spends her days locked away in the house with them, until her increasingly annoyed and utterly useless husband insists that she take them out for some fresh air. That day as poor sleep deprived Lauren dozed off for a minute, someone snatched her babies. Lauren no longer her babies but someone else's. Someone else who has been stalking her since Lauren overheard her singing to her own twins in the recovery room and demanded that they switch babies.

As someone who has never, to my shame, had children, it is hard for me to understand what postpartum depression really is and how it affects the life of a new mother. In several ways, this book is rather disturbing. It also becomes a mystery or sorts to puzzle out the facts from the paranormal. Plus, the ending is rather strange in that it really doesn't the question as to whether or not Lauren experienced what she did, or was a psychosis?

This novel BLEW MY MIND.

As I was reading I didn’t know who to trust or who to believe. I had all these theories about what happened. I could not figure it out.

I went back and forth thinking the Lake Lady was real or made up in her mind. But then there was all the evidence and I felt crazy!

Overall, this is also a very good depiction of what PPD/PPA looks like. As someone who suffers with both, I just felt for her. In those moments you are so scared for your baby you just believe everything is real and you can’t shake the feeling the ball will drop and something bad will happen.

I usually don’t read horror, and this book reminded me why. I had such screwed up dreams. I could only read it during the day.

I loved this novel. I loved the ending. I have recommended it again and again for our book club and Book Battle!

Right off the bat, we know something is wrong with Lauren Tranter. We are told she's going through the complications of not having a C-section and is made to stay overnight in the maternity ward, along with another mother. That's went things start going askew and Lauren experiences her first of many traumatic events. Home isn't any better. Strange gifts. Pressure and paranoia. Lauren can't count on her husband and she can't shake off the feeling that something is out to get her and the newly born twins. The start of many sleepless nights commence with Lauren as the sole protector to her babies.

Most of the characters were background noise so I've mentioned the few that stood out.

Lauren Tranter is not someone I particularly liked at the beginning of the story but she grows on you. You start to see her evolving as her exasperation grows... the means she takes to assure that her babies are returned safe and sound? It certainly won me over, especially toward the end when that fierce protectiveness motherhood personality comes to the surface.

Patrick Tranter is not someone liked. There might be some evolving as a father, minimal at most but as a person? This man goes from bad to rotten and by the end, there's really no redeeming qualities. In fact, I dare say he's the real villain in the story.

Johanna Harper is someone that was likable at first. Understanding where no one else would side with Lauren and even going as far as to check up on things when it seemed as if everything pointed to 'case close'. She was witty, persistent and funny at times but ultimately, she dismisses all the strangeness of the case, relying on the cold, hard facts.

Amy is the flirtatious journalist that somehow has the charm and connections to fill most of the holes regarding Harper's investigation. As a journalist, Amy is transparent. Her goal is single-minded and that is to get to the heart of the story but she proves to be a respectable individual and a friend when needed. Amy's past is murky at best and there's not really a backstory to her.

My Review/Thoughts
This book started out negative for me. There's crude and grotesque details regarding the after pregnancy that were realistic enough to make me cringe with disgust—found in the first few chapters. (This might be a personal caveat but I thought I should still mention it. It was a trigger of sorts.)

From that point forth, initial assumptions led me to believe the focus would be gore-filled, eerie details but that wasn't the case. The real horror aspect of the story is the Tranter's deteriorating marriage, the selfishness of the husband even as the wife is desperately trying to cling to sanity.

The book uses excerpts from folktales and lore at the beginning of each chapter as well as throughout the story. I thought these snippets added to the overall eeriness of the book.

The writing style was simple, crude and at times, vivid with realism. The horrors littered through the pages are a mother's worst nightmare. This book is not without its clichés but it wasn't enough to ruin my reading experience.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for providing an advanced copy of this book (Kindle) in exchange for an honest review.