This was fine. It wasn't a mystery, more just a drama with a little suspense. I would have liked to see more of how Billie and Cassie's friendship became so fractured, especially from Cassie's point of view of them growing up. I think there were interesting conversations about motherhood. It had a lot of potential, but I just wanted it to push a little more.

OMG this book. Whew, what a wild ride!! What do you do when you hear your best friend scream bloody murder after discovering her infant daughter is missing, but you're the one who has the baby in your arms?? Bam.

Billie and Cassie have been best friends since childhood, but Cassie, whose life has been taken over by marriage, motherhood and her budding influencer platform, starts to pull away from Billie. And Billie is not having it. She's desperate to hold onto their friendship, and is willing to do anything (and I mean ANYTHING) to keep from losing Cassie.

Bye, Baby is told in alternating POVs, with a close look at how friendships change over time, and the choices you make regarding which friends to keep in your life as you get older. I LOVED this book. It's a rollercoaster, and I didn't want to get off!

What a fantastic book! It was a quintessential psychological drama, with the added layer of complicated, fractured female friendship. I was hooked right from the start, and Lovering's writing kept me engaged until the final page.

These characters were not always the most likable in the world, especially Cassie-- but the nuance of their personalities, history and shared experience revealed much more depth than meets the eye. It's awfully difficult to feel sorry for someone that takes a baby-- but Billie is a character you an empathize with.

I was a tad unfulfilled by the ending... I wanted more of a comeuppance for Cassie and Grant, but Billie's ending was satisfying.

This was my first book by Lovering and will DEFINITELY not be my last. I love her writing style and creative plotting. An auto-read from now on for sure!

Congrats to everyone who worked on this book's release, and thank you for my advance copy!

Absolutely loved this book!!! I was so disappointed that I couldn't sit and read it all in one day! The pieces of it all started to come together at the end, and the author did an amazing job of keeping it exciting from start to finish! Carola Lovering continues to be one of my favorite authors!

Bye, Baby by Carola Lovering is the story of Billie West and her childhood best friend, Cassie Barnwell. They were bonded by an incident that happened 23 years ago but the inseparable pair started to grow up and drift apart. Cassie has a baby and when her baby goes missing, the only one she wants by her side is her best friend, Billie.

I know this probably isn’t the general consensus but I didn’t care for this book. Bye, Baby by Carola Lovering is a psychological thriller, while it had a great premise, all I could think was “cringe.” An old friendship, secrets that no one knows, a missing baby. There are so many interesting facets to this novel, but it just didn’t hit for me. I think that the writing was fantastic and Carola Lovering did a great job of painting a picture of the difficulty of lifelong friendships and what can happen when these friendships drift apart. I loved the different points of view, that allowed each character to tell their story and the added complexity of different timelines adds to the suspense of the novel. I just had a hard time getting through the story.

Rated 3.5 Stars.

Thank you to Carola Lovering, St. Martins Press and Netgalley for the eARC of Bye, Baby by Carola Lovering. Publication date for Bye, Baby was 05 March 2024. If you like twisty tales, take a look at this one.

What a ride! I loved the alternating perspectives so you never know who is in the right or wrong. It kept me reading way into the night and I couldnt wait to find out how it would conclude. Highly recommend! Thank you to Netgalley and the Publisher for approving me to read and review this ARC. I cant wait to read more from this author.

Many thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for providing me with an eARC of Bye, Baby in exchange for my honest review!

As much as I think this could have been significantly tighter, Bye, Baby is still a solid way to unpack weighty themes like toxic codependency and the pressures of motherhood that society inflicts against women. It's just that I've read tons of other books that also explore these same themes, and they managed to do the job in a more taut and fleshed-out fashion. With Bye, Baby, it suffers from dragging on for too long at multiple points—points where it really would have benefitted from trimming some pages in order to strengthen the material. I do admire how we get to navigate the complicated facets of Billie, Cassie, and their dynamic that undergoes quite the evolution over the years—an evolution that reaches an inevitable and satisfying conclusion.

Overall, I'm officially rating Bye, Baby three out of five stars. I wish I could have left it with a more strongly positive reaction, but it's still solid enough, and it motivates me to keep an eye on more of Carola Lovering's work.

Honestly, I kind of had a love/hate relationship with both of the main characters. The author really did a great job of giving them each enough admirable characteristics to keep you from completely hating both of them. Definitely a fascinating read, and it kept me wondering just how things would come to a close. Given this was the first book I’ve read of the author’s, I will most likely check out any other of their books.

Reading Between the Wines book review #24/130 for 2024:
Rating: 3 ½ 🍷 🍷 🍷
Book: Bye, Baby
Author: Carola Lovering
Available now!

Sipping thoughts: I love the beginning of this book and following the “kidnapping” of Cassie’s baby. And to know that her best friend Billie was the one who took her was beyond wild! The alternating POVs pulled me in, and I could not wait until I got back to see and hear how Billie was going to get out of a kidnapping charge. This book was on track to being a 4–5-star book until the ending. I do not know how I wanted the book to end but I just didn’t love the ending, so I dropped it down to 3.5 stars.

Cheers and thank you to @StMartinsPress and @Netgalley for an advanced copy of @ByeBaby.

#ByeBaby #CarolaLovering #StMartinsPress #advancedreadercopy #ARC #Kindle #Booksofinstagram #readersofinstagram #bookstagram #nicoles_bookcellar #bookworm #bookdragon #booknerd #booklover #bookstagrammer #bookaholic #bookreview #bookreviewer #IHaveNoShelfControl #ReadingBetweenTheWines #fiction #thriller #suspense #mystery #MysteryAndThrillers #GeneralFictionAdult

⚠️ CW: kidnapping, SA, alzheimers, death

I’ve seen some people poo pooing this one but glad I still gave it a chance!

Plenty of secrets and suspense between two long-time adult friends who have shared secrets from their childhood that resurface when one of their children goes missing from her home.

It’s not a high octane mess-you-up kind of psych thriller but it is still entertaining. It’s dual POV and dual timelines and the dual narrators were pretty good on the audiobook.

3.5 stars rounded up

Thank you to Carola, SMP, and NetGalley for the e-galley!

This wasn’t quite a thriller or mystery but it was more suspenseful than contemporary fiction - however you define it, it was great. I’ve loved all three of her books I’ve read so far, each in a slightly different genre. Told from the POV of two unlikeable characters, this was a page-turner and I kept telling myself 1 more chapter which snowballed into flying through it.

Suspenseful but not quite a thriller. Felt like a domestic drama. The characters were enjoyable for being unenjoyable characters and the book pulled you in. Dual timeline and super toxic friendships.

Thanks for the free copy in exchange for my feedback.

This was a total miss for me. This is more of a domestic suspense about an outgrown friendship gone really wrong.
There should be a whole lot of trigger warnings. There is everything from pedophilia to mental health issues.

Thank you Net Galley for the opportunity to read this book

Would recommend for fans of…
🍼 People Like Her
🍼 Can’t Look Away
🍼 The Couple Next Door

I’ve read and enjoyed nearly all of Carola Lovering’s books, and know I can always count on her to deliver a taut and suspenseful book that dissects every element of female friendship. Her latest, Bye, Baby, builds on that foundation, offering her most nuanced look at toxic friendships yet.

This isn’t a spoiler, as it’s mentioned in the jacket copy, but this book follows Billie, a woman who abducts the baby of her “friend” Cassie, and the path that led them to that fateful night. Even though you know what is about to take place, this book is thrilling. That element is really brought to life by Lovering’s characters. Cassie and Billie feel so real, that I’m sure every reader will identify with parts of both characters. Lovering does an excellent job of humanizing both of them. One second I was rooting for Billie, then Cassie, and then I hated them both. That roller coaster of emotions really speaks to Lovering’s skill in crafting these stories.

The one issue I had with this book, and really all of Lovering’s is how they are marketed. I’m begging her publisher to stop calling her books thrillers because that’s not what they are. Lovering’s writing hovers in the domestic/romantic suspense sphere and I feel like some readers are let down when they pick up her books expecting a pulse-pounding action. And though her stories may be lacking those thrills, Carola Lovering is one of the best when it comes to character-driven, contemplative suspense about modern womanhood. I can’t wait to read her next book!

Bye, Baby is out now. Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for the eARC in exchange for an honest review.

Uhhhh…not my fave. I loved Tell Me Lies, like, wanted to crawl into the book loved it. This was not that. I think there were too many things going on, there were too many themes to try to tackle, we desperately needed a therapist to explain this stuff, and was it a thriller? It feels mismarketed. I just, no, thank you.

Wow what a ride. This book delves deep into the female friendships and how toxic they can be.

I did get very frustrated with Billie at times and the choices she was making. She would put her whole life on hold for Cassie because she craved her acceptance. I was very happy that in the end that Billie realized that what Cassie did when they were kids was for Cassie and not her. Cassie was always looking out for herself and that will never change.

Wow. This book is crazy! Unlike most domestic suspense novels, this book centers around best friends. Best friends who have gone down different paths. One is determined to bring them back together.

So she…kidnaps her influencer best friends baby?! What the fudge?

Let’s also throw in a hot cop. And some very good twists.

I’ll let you read it for yourself, but it doesn’t disappoint.

Thank you to Carola Lovering, St. Martins Press and NetGalley for the ARC copy of this book

This was my 1st book by this author. It was a very slow read. I thought it was going to be a thriller, but it opens up with the kidnapping, then starts telling the back story. Cassie & Billie’s friendship was toxic and I just couldn’t get into the story. All the timeline jumps had me confused. It wasn’t my cup of tea, but it may be for someone else.

Thank you NetGalley, the publisher & of course the author for gifting me this ARC in exchange for my review.

I have a few of Carola’s books, but this is the first one I’ve read. I thought this was going to be a thriller, and I don’t really think it fits into that category. This was a slow start for me, making it hard to get into at first, but I did like the multiple POV’s (Billie and Cassie’s), and the dual timelines. Cassie was a bit much for me at times, and I really felt for Billie. Well written and thought provoking for sure.

This was a fantastic read that I flew through. I loved both Billie and Cassie as main characters and their friendship felt raw and real. Even the side characters were very well-developed. I was trying to figure out the whole time why Billie took Cassie's baby, and then was on edge during the investigation. Very well-done. I'm writing this review a little late, and I still vividly remember this story, so I am changing the 4 stars I initially gave it to 5 stars as books don't tend to stick with me like this.