by I.J. Miller
This book was provided to me for free by the author in exchange for an honest review.
Physically abused Alice meets mentally abused Maddie and the two of them deicide getting a child and giving it all the love in the world.
Tbh at the beginning I absolutely didn’t get into the story. It all starts in a cheap motel room where Maddie and Alice try to protect their Babyboy Jesse from the police who have already surrounded the motel they are in.
The scene is the told form Maddie’s, Alice’s and the Police officer’s point of view, but for me it somehow felt like a simple description of what everyone is doing since I didn’t get any feelings.
Every other chapter in the first part is alternately about Al’s or Maddie’s childhood. So between the scenes in the motel-room we get to know about Al’s dad who started abusing Al when she was 8 years old and how she experienced her teenage years. And Maddie’s childhood and teenage years with a mother who mentally abused her and at the same time made Maddie through autoaggressive acts to stay with her. Yet although both stories are really horrible and you get kind of goosebumps while reading, something was missing. It’s hard to describe but I was reading through these chapters, thinking ‘how awful’ but didn’t feel sad for one of the girls or angry with one of the parents.
Then the second part starts and it’s all about Maddie and Al getting to know each other. That was the moment I slowly started getting into the story. But still didn’t feel with or for Maddie or Al but for Wynn, a Canadian student who saved Al from a bunch of his mates and whose career as an athlete comes to an abrupt end through a car accident. Al later marries him – still out of thankfulness for rescuing her – so that he doesn’t have to go back to Canada. Later Al also gets his sperm so that she and Maddy can have their baby.
And that leads us to part three – Maddie’s and Al’s escape from their baby’s daddy and rich grandpa who wants to have custody. Now the story really had me. I got Al’s feelings, I got Maddy’s feelings and I felt with them, I hoped with them, I feared for them through their whole journey through the states till they see the skyline of New York.
Through this chapter you see parallels between Al and Maddie’s mum – both women want to rule over Maddie. But Maddie has her baby boy now who she has to protect – Will she manage to escape another person who tries to influence her and make her own decisions or will she do whatever Al demands even if it meant killing her and the baby?