What an interesting book about friendship and small decisions with big impacts. I expected it to turn out somehow grander, but it was satisfying if a bit flat.

"Bye, Baby" by Carola Lovering offers a compelling mix of themes and elements that would appeal to readers who enjoy intense and dramatic stories. The combination of love, toxic friendship, and self-discovery suggests a narrative rich in emotional depth and complexity. The incorporation of literary suspense, domestic drama, character-driven storytelling, dual timelines, and multiple points of view indicates a layered and engaging reading experience. If you enjoy books with a dark and sexy atmosphere, along with a healthy dose of suspense and drama, "Bye, Baby" is a book worth exploring!

Bye, Baby is not a mystery or a thriller. It is a book about relationships and how they change over time. The book centers around Billie and Cassie and is told in dual point of view with flashbacks. Cassie’s baby is missing and we learn right away who took her, Cassie’s estranged best friend Billie. With the biggest mystery already solved, the book lacks the element of suspense or mystery. I enjoyed getting the pov of both women and thought the flashbacks carried an overall lackluster plot. Fans of Carla Lovering should give this one a try.

Bye, Baby was a wild ride for me.

The book is told from Billie and Cassie's POV. They are childhood friends that have grown apart and when the book starts, Cassie is screaming for her missing baby who Billie has taken. The story then proceeds to go back to when they are first childhood friends to the present day where are story begins.

There is a lot to process in this story. I went through all the emotions while reading this. My anxiety was sky high as this story unfolded.

These are flawed, real characters. Cassie is just awful- obsessed with self image and social media. She was unbearable to me. Billie is such a sweetie but she is obsessed with her "best friend" despite being treated so poorly by Cassie.

This book had so many issues that it felt incredibly heavy to me, or at least heavier than I expected. Bye, Baby touches on sexual assault, social class, grief, Alzheimer's, social media and toxic relationships. There was a lot happening and I felt overwhelmed with everything at times.

I did enjoy the book overall and would recommend to any one that likes a suspenseful, psychological read.

Billie and Cassie's friendship has become strained and distant as they've grown up and grown apart, becoming two very different women. Once the best of friends, they had grown up together and leaned on each other during tough times in their teenage years until one traumatic event changed their whole lives. Now Cassie is a wealthy married woman with a baby, a massive social media following, and a trendy clothing store. Billie is single, perhaps a bit aimless in life, though she does have a fantastic and rewarding career in the travel industry. But Billie feels banished and cast aside by her once dear friend, Cassie and her hurt and confusion is completely consuming her.

Both Cassie and Billie both exhibit unlikeable qualities in some way that make it hard to root for them as MCs. Cassie, because of her obsession with social media and projecting a perfect image. And Billie, because she's hopelessly wanting to get back in Cassie's inner circle despite being pushed to the side and made to feel less than. I often find it difficult to be invested in a book with unlikeable characters, but Lovering has done excellent job of completely sucking me in, eagerly turning the pages, as I try to decipher just what caused the rift in Cassie and Billie's friendship and what happened to Cassie's baby.

This is more than a thriller, it's about women's friendship, friendships over time, and motherhood. I enjoyed the format of the different points of view and the alternating timelines. Pick this one up now!

Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for the advanced copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Casie and Billy have a long, somewhat discombobulated past. They grew up as best friends, but Casie was determined to leave all of her small town life behind for bigger and better things. When she marries Grant Adler and all the money and perks that come from being an Adler, she thinks she has made it. When her baby is kidnapped, the only person she wants is Billy. But Billy has secrets that she knows can turn everything upside down and she wants to keep them hidden at all costs to keep Casie in her life again.

What a ride this book was! It really examines friendship and betrayal. I really enjoyed it!

Absolutely love Carola Lovering! This new one I raced through fervently and really enjoyed it! The only thing I can say about it is that there were many characters to keep track of in the beginning (mostly minor characters) but it ended up being fine.

I wish I could have recorded my facial expressions while reading this wildly entertaining and twisted friendship story. It would have gone something like this… 😱😳🥴🤦🏻‍♀️🤬😢😱😳

We start off with one of the most hooking prologues I’ve read in a while. The last sentence of it already had me gasping, “oh sh!t.” Naturally, I started FLYING through pages because I just had to know how we got there!

I got sucked in to this nightmarish friendship. It was thrilling, it was heartbreaking, and it was dark at times. Billie was a pushover, and I wanted so badly to ask her WHY on earth would she stay friends with someone so superficial. Cassie was a wannabe rich girl who was also a grade A mean girl.

I wasn’t really a huge fan of either of them, but the writing was so dang good that I was actually heartbroken for both of them at different times in the book. Some of this was hard to read, and it had my momma heart in shatters as Cassie experiences the unimaginable. It also had me wanting to slap Billie for some of her idiotic decisions 😂

The pace was fast with short chapters, two POVs, and flashbacks. As I was reading, I wasn’t sure how I wanted this one to end, but I think Carola ended it perfectly.

so much anxiety. I was so scared for Billie the entire time, even after the ending. I love seeing how stereotypical Pinterest moms view those who don't have children, mainly cuz it hits on another level of anti-feminism. I actually really liked Cassie's character, not her personality, but it was so interesting to see her standards and how she grew from this experience (hint: she didn't). I'm still conflicted on if it was wrong for her to "kidnap" Ella.

I didn't know what to expect from this book when I first started it, but I absolutely loved it. It was wonderfully written and touches on many different subjects. I highly recommend!

Bye, Baby by Carola Lovering is just wow. I'm usually never surprised, but this one blew me away.
Oh my word!… What a great storyteller Carola Lovering is! From the fabulous plot which quite frankly had me on the edge of my seat throughout to the amazing character development, I am overwhelmed by this book! It was so good!
This book is fantastically written, another amazing success from Carola Lovering.
It all flows really well and the descriptions really put you in the picture.
An astonishing novel!

Thank You NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for your generosity and gifting me a copy of this amazing eARC!

"Bye, Baby" by Carola Lovering is Friendship and Women's Fiction With a Touch of Suspense!

Billie and Cassie met during the summer before seventh grade and quickly became best friends. Whatever was lacking at home, their friendship filled. Connected at the hip, so to speak, each would do anything for the other.

After high school, they begin to drift apart. As Cassie becomes engaged to a wealthy man, Billie notices subtle changes in their friendship. When Cassie has a baby and Billie remains single and childless, she realizes there's not much left that connects them. Still, Billie remains hopeful...

"Bye, Baby" is told in Cassie's and Billie's first-person narratives through short, alternating chapters. The focus is on the 30 days before Cassie's 35th birthday, and on the backstory of their friendship. Initially, I didn't care for either protagonist but as the details of the friendship began to unfold, my understanding of both characters levels out. It's a complicated relationship, to say the least.

This was an immersion read-listen through the gifted DRC and ALC. The audiobook narrated by Helen Laser and Karissa Vacker was my preference, but either format will deliver a great experience.

"Bye, Baby" feels more like Friendship and Women's Fiction with a touch of Suspense rather than a Mystery-Thriller. The pace is consistent and the contrast in personalities between the two main characters contributes to the emotional drama of the story. I enjoyed this far more than I expected to and I love the way it ended. Recommended!

4⭐

Thank you to NetGalley, St. Martin's Press, Macmillan Audio, and Carola Lovering for a DRC and an ALC of this book through NetGalley. It has been a pleasure to give my honest and voluntary review.

What happens when the friend you knew and loved can't fit you into their life anymore?? An outstanding portrayal of life in the shadows of someone famous, while the other is floundering to get by. There is so much history between the two POVs, Cassie with her influence job on social media plus married to a very wealthy Grant, then there is Billie who will melt your heart with her life story nothing short of heartbreaking and cheering for her strength to move past it. What she won't get past is her love and obsession for her best friend for the last 23 years. Checking Cassie's social media account several times a day to see how she is functioning on a daily basis with her thousands of followers and her new store. Now her fascination with her new baby, Ella!
Cassie has a new mix of friends with the same amount of class and money, looking down on her past friendship with Billie.
Leading Billie on, then discounting her in front of her high class friends leaves Billie envying her lifestyle. This deals with the trauma of childhood abuse and trauma and how the one thing that ties Billie and Cassie together is the one thing that drives them apart. Their restoration of the friendship is quickly dissolved and reignited several times. Cassie's baby Ella goes missing and we know from the beginning of the story Billie has taken her. The countdown to that down draws us into the past and what happened up until this incident. I do know Alex is an outstanding boyfriend and one of my favorite characters.
I will not forget this one and it may be my top book for this year under mystery thrillers. Our lives are connected and tangled with so many people, but can be shattered in no time with hopes and dreams that change by the by product of our raising or our classes.
Thank you St. Martins Press and NetGalley for allowing me the opportunity to read this ARC in exchange for my honest review.

Kapow! The Prologue grabbed me and I sneaked in pages by listening to the audio when walking the dog and reading the digital on my Kindle in between. Lovering tells the story of Billie and Cassie's friendship with two present POVs--one from each--and interludes from that past by Billie. This book may try to cover too many themes: friendship, assault, social media, privilege, Alzheimer's, choosing to be childless, and more. . . One thing I especially loved was the crossover reference to previous title Can't Look Away. Unfortunately there were quite a few F-bombs. Leaving this at a four-star rating. My favorite title from Lovering is still Too Good to Be True.

Thank you to Macmillan Audio, St. Martins Press, and NetGalley for an audio and a digital ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I really enjoyed this story! It was less thriller than I was expecting and more of a domestic suspense, but it was very entertaining and read quickly.

It took place in NYC and focused on two women who had been friends since childhood. One who was an instagram influencer married to a rich husband with a new baby and living in the penthouse apartment. The other, child free by choice, navigating new relationships and working as a travel consultant. It explored the way friendship changes over the years and how people change. One night, during a huge birthday party, the baby goes missing, abducted from her stroller where she was napping. I really don't want to say much to avoid spoilers but it gets interesting!

There aren't any huge twists in this story as everything is laid out pretty early on. But honestly, it doesn't really need the twists. It's more dramatic than thriller and I still really liked it.

I read this is less than 24 hours, every minute in between being a mom, wife and friend. I lived and breathed this book. The beginning which was part 1 was so intriguing. Part two was filled with so much anxiety I couldn’t put it down. I needed to know how it happened, what was going to happen and how everything would end. This book did not disappoint.

I do have to say there are three very big trigger warning.

Let it be known I love @carolatlovering . While I’m not a mystery/thriller fan, her stories are page turners that keep me wondering throughout. Bye, Baby tells the story of Billie and Cassie-childhood best friends, now estranged as adults. The book begins with Cassie realizing her infant daughter is missing, and Billie notices the baby is in her arms. The tale that follows takes us many places, and what’s so masterful is how the reader feels about the two main characters as the story progresses. Lovering is a master at manipulating the reader this way, and I loved the ride. This is an excellent read! Thank you to @netgalley and to @stmartinspress for the advance copy of this book that releases on 3/5. #byebaby #carolalovering #springreading #springreads

Two friends with a tumultuous relationship, now thrown back together by a missing baby. Had promise and started strong…but second half felt very slow.

Billie and Cassie have one of those once in a lifetime friendships, having grown up together through their worst times and seen each other at their lowest points. Fast forward to adulthood, and they have drifted apart. Billie is single and has no desire to have kids, Cassie is a stay at home new mom who married into a wealthy family. When Billie accidentally kidnaps Cassie’s baby while she’s in a daze, she realizes things will never go back to how they were.

Marketed as a thriller, this book read like much more than that! It was a real analysis on female friendship, and how things can evolve over the years as women go through different experiences in their own lives. I loved the tangled and complex web of friendship that Lovering wove, and I liked that the reader got both perspectives. This book should come with a trigger warning for sexual assault as one of the characters does experience it and it’s described in detail. There was lots of effective suspense building and I would definitely read another one by this author!

Bye, Baby 🍼👒🌆🚓📱
by Carola Lovering
4.4/5 ✨

This novel had me picking it back up no matter how many others I had sitting in my "Currently Reading" pile. Something about the two main characters, Billie and Cassie, kept drawing me back in. I had so many highlighted passages while reading/listening to it, most of which made me feel understood as the friend with no kids (and no desire to change that, either). Lovering does a wonderful job of highlighting the brutal landscape that is female friendship and dynamics. While some of the flashbacks threw me off guard, most of them provided important story and world-building information. If you're a fan of mildly thrilling domestic thrillers, you'll enjoy this one (that's not a read, this is just more psychological than physical in terms of thrills).

I have to say, I was more inclined to turn on the audiobook of this title than to pick up the eARC! The narrators, Helen Laser and Karissa Vacker, are amazing and bring so much life and personality to the story that's being told. If anything, I'd recommend the audiobook of this title.

Thank you to NetGalley, author Carola Lovering, narrators Helen Laser and Karissa Vacker, St. Martin's Press, and Macmillan Audio for the opportunity to read (or listen) and review this ARC!