We don’t talk enough about how friendships change. This is one of the key elements of Bye, Baby. Billie and Cassie have been friends for over 20 years and their lives have transformed during this period. They grew up together, went through some deeply challenging moments, and after college the pair of them moved to New York together.

Now that they’re in their 30s, Cassie is a mom and one night her infant goes missing. And we quickly learn that Billie has the baby in her arms. The story reveals itself in the days leading up to and after the baby’s disappearance, while also helping us learn more about Cassie and Billie’s history and friendship through alternating chapters from each woman’s point of view.

While touted as a thriller, I would say this book is more suspenseful or dramatic. It manages to cover a lot of themes and topics including influencer culture, childhood trauma, decisions around motherhood, and of course, friendship. There’s bits I could have done without, and would have loved to see more character development with some of the more vapid characters. But I was captivated by the story and curious to see how it would all turn out.

Thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for an eGalley in exchange for my honest review.

Whoa! This book is a power house from Carola Lovering. No one does depth of character like here. Told in alternating timelines and character point of views, the reader is given a front row seat to a friendship that has always been on the brink of collapsing. When a fateful night threatens to destroy their relationship, Billie finds she is lost without the whirlwind known as bff Cassie in her life. Years later another bad choice brings them together, and tears them apart. Dark and delicious with secrets that will break your heart and make you mad. Loved this book!

I thoroughly enjoyed reading Bye, Baby by Carola Lovering. This book was extremely well written about the love of family and friends. Two young girls who were best friends growing up and the dramatic changes as adults. It’s about all kinds of love. So many twists and turns as Carola weaves her story. The twist and turns are not only throughout the book but right up to the end. I found this book to be unputdownable! Hope you enjoy this book as much as I did.
Irene G

Billie and Cassie are lifelong friends who share a dark secret. Cassie is married and has a new baby while Billie has a successful job she loves, but she feels that Cassie is moving on from their friendship while Billie is still hanging on to it and will do anything to keep Cassie’s friendship. This was good book that kept me interested to the end. Thanks to St. Martin’s Press and Netgalley for my arc.

I was all set for unhinged creepiness or a massive comeuppance that never materialized. I had strong feelings about Cassie, but it seemed like I was being steered to root for her. A book that makes you keep reading even when you dislike a character is always good writing in my opinion. I just got frustrated bc no one got what they deserved. Or maybe that is just life?

This was by far my favorite of Lovering's books- a memorable tale of a toxic friendship, layered with some thriller plot aspects and incredibly deft character development, I could not put it down and finished the novel in a day. I would one thousand percent recommend this to anyone looking for an intense, fulfilling read next year! Five stars for sure!

This is one of the first books in a while that has grabbed me and made me want to keep reading. It has so many things in it. Best friends growing and changing, a crime, subterfuge, lies, betrayals, new friendships, old friendships, money, and so much more. This book takes so many elements from different genres and mixes them together perfectly! I just wanted to keep reading until it was over. Then I was sad when it was over. The characters were well developed and felt genuine. If you enjoy a realistic feeling book that spans different genres then this is the book for you.

Old friends - old secrets. A well written story line that pulled all the ugly threads together. Thanks for the chance to read and review this book.

I love this book! It was so good — fun characters and a new, never done before plot. The suspense had me reading quickly but at the same time I wanted to savor it.

This was an interesting book for me in that after I finished it I kept asking myself if I liked it or not. The main character was rather frustrating with the choices she made and her mother was even worse. It will get you thinking about what you would do if faced with certain situations. Be warned though, this book definitely isn’t for those who are sensitive to sexual child abuse.

Thank you to St. Martin’s Press and NetGalley for the opportunity to read the ARC edition of Bye, Baby by Carola Lovering.
The novel was a well written story of two friends whose shared history keeps them tethered together. I love how the author included social media and its power in to the book.
A intriguing read that I couldn’t put down.

Bye Baby is a riveting story that mesmerizes from the introduction and draws and draws and doesn't release until the unexpected but longed for ending. I couldn't put it down. Carola Lovering is an exciting storyteller that demands attention.

I always enjoy Lovering’s books, and this was no different, even if it felt a little flat at times. I can relate to Cassie and Billie’s friendship dynamic and I think the build up is well written and explained. I could’ve used a bit more suspense or even a twist at the end, but it also ended well. Overall a solid book.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Thank you to NetGalley St Martins Press and Carola Lovering for this digital ARC of Bye, Baby in return for my honest review. I have never read any of Lovering’s novels - this was my first.

Billie and Cassie are friends from their middle school days. Cassie shows up out of nowhere and was thrown to the middle class wolves (so to speak) and everyone knows she doesn’t belong there. These two girls go through a lot together with Cassie leading the way and Billie obediently following her. As they grow older they shift and grow apart into very different attitudes and social classes.

They have secrets that bind them together. And their pasts and childhoods set them up for a lot of mental and emotional strain and trauma.

One night Ella, Cassie’s daughter goes missing from a party and Cassie suddenly wants Billie and no one else. This fast paced novel would make a great book club read. I have so many things I want to discuss here - but that leads to spoilers and I don’t want to spoil anything.

I really enjoyed this book! The characters were well developed and the story was engaging. I recommend that others try this book as well. Well done!

I've read several of Carola Lovering's books and this one really stood out to me. Cassie and Billie had such a close friendship with a secret that bound them together forever. In time, Cassie had moved on and I often think this happens in friendships. I'm not sure I would label this a thriller. I was sad by the end and it made me feel all kinds of emotions. BYE, BABY is not a story I will soon forget.

Many thanks to St. Martin's Press and NetGalley for my ARC.

This review will be shared to my Instagram (@coffee.break.book.reviews) closer to pub date.

I loved this! I always love a novel about friends with dark secrets, and this one delivered! Takes on the genre in a fresh way.

I’ve loved all of Carola Lovering’s books and this one is no different. I’d say this is less thriller than her last couple books and a little more like Tell Me Lies. A long time friendship is starting to fade away when an unusual, frightening and unforgivable act brings these friends back together. The reader gets to see the history of the friendship and how it got to its current state in dual narrations and timelines. I couldn’t put it down!

I received a free copy of, Bye , Baby, by Carola Lovering, from the publisher and Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. Cassie Barnwell's infant daughter is missing, her best friend Billie West who lives a floor below in her apartment building, wants to help find her baby. Billie and Cassie has grown apart though, as time does change relationships. I found this book to be quiet twisted, I could not believe the ending.

Carola Lovering’s most recent thriller, Bye, Baby, is a compulsively readable look into the complex friendship between two women, and the way that motherhood, trauma, and growing up change and distort that bond. At its core, the novel is character-driven, and though written in the format of a traditional thriller, it feels like a drama. Sure, there is crime, and sure, mystery abounds, but the spaces in between are what make the story what it is.
Cassie and Billie have been friends since they were twelve years old, protecting each other and shaping their lives around one another. But now, in their mid-thirties, Billie feels Cassie pulling away. A new mother and wife to an uber-wealthy hedge fund manager, Cassie doesn’t feel like Billie, childfree and unmarried, jetting across the world for her glamorous travel-planning job, fits into her new life. So opens the novel with a push and pull, unequal dynamic. As more and more flashbacks unfold, the reasons why Billie is so hurt by Cassie’s neglect start to become more apparent. The discerning reader who asks themselves upon the novel’s opening lines, “but what’s so bad about growing apart?” may be well advised to hold onto their proverbial seats. This is something I appreciate about Lovering’s most recent work. Both characters feel extremely grounded in their own pathos, their own way of thinking about things, and reading from each perspective feels believable. I came to understand these characters. How they became who they are, how seeds of their adolescent personalities grew into their modern-day lifestyles, and how that caused them to grow apart. Cassie’s admiration of her wealthy grandmother and the ways that her father’s squandered fortune affected her family cause her to seek out a partner with money, and once she has that, to cling onto it with a vice-like grip. Billie’s wonderment at escaping her toxic household on a spring break visit to Paris causes her to seek out a career where traveling is commonplace and necessary.
Having read two of Lovering’s other novels, Tell Me Lies and Can’t Look Away (the latter of which I DNFed, the former of which I mildly enjoyed) I appreciate the ways that Lovering is evolving as an author. She is certainly not stagnating, and the increased depth in her character work, which really forms the backbone of this novel, feel much appreciated. However, having read more of her work, it’s clear she is glued to the idea of “writing what you know”. Her novels are minimally diverse, existing in a New York City and Long Island where everyone is white and upper middle class at the very least. This in and of itself may not be problematic, I mean, we can’t expect every book to include diverse depictions, but I will admit it gets tedious to read about uber-privileged white people and their rich white lives, and how hard those lives are. What puts the cherry on top is the way her work presents the lives of anyone who is not a millionaire as difficult and fraught. Even the people whom this novel presents as “poor” have enough money to attend private colleges without taking out student loans. Billie’s mother, diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer’s, has enough money for a live-in nurse and for Billie to attend Northeastern. Northeastern itself is described in the book as a “mid-tier” school, and I won’t even get into the disdain with which the novel treats the SUNY system. It’s tiring to read about and mildly offensive to have a book which is so steeped in themes of class disparity to treat that disparity in this cavalier manner.
Additionally, I would have enjoyed seeking more of the “in-between” moments in Cassie and Billie’s friendship. I would have liked to be shown flashback moments where they were laughing on the floor, instead of being told about them after the fact. In the flashbacks (which at times grew tedious and boring in and of themselves) we are treated to a highlight reel of sorts, major plot points throughout their friendship, but these moments, while important, were seldom happy, and I feel the climax of the novel would have been more impactful if we had seen specifically what made their friendship so great (besides the obvious, which we won’t go into right now). Suffice to say, I would have appreciated more nuance in this work. Between Billie and her stepfather Wade I would have appreciated this too. Their relationship is Nabokovian, Lolita-esque, and that is all. I know he is the major villain of the story, but I would have wanted to see a little more of his relationship to Billie’s mother, to really understand where that came from and what shaped the dynamic in that household. That feels like a really important thing to include, and we were missing it.
Overall, this novel had solid writing and structure. If you enjoy family drama, female friendships, books about motherhood, and, yes, thrillers, I think this book would be an enjoyable read. If you know a bunch of WASPs married to hedge fund managers and think that Northeastern is a bad school, I would also recommend this novel. Thank you to NetGalley for an advanced reader's copy in exchange for my honest review.