The subplots (What is Patrick’s secret? Can Amy be trusted?) and Golding’s firm control of tension, tease the reader to come down on one side of the supernatural vs. How could her brain conjure something that seemed so real, something laden with so much horrifying detail, and yet there be nothing at all? The threat of the changelings is every bit as scary as the alternative – and more rational – explanation that Lauren is losing her mind. Through Golding’s skillful handling, we empathise with Lauren’s loneliness as a new mum at home, and her realisation that the main burden of parenting will fall on her shoulders. In common with many women, Lauren is left feeling like a bit-part during the birth, and not up to the challenge of caring for her newborns. Golding doesn’t hold back in the delivery room, depicting childbirth in all its traumatic, gory and exhausting detail. Only one person is prepared to listen to her: Detective Sergeant Joanna Harper. An hour later they are found alive, but Lauren can’t shake the feeling that they are not her babies.

Then the unthinkable happens, the babies are taken.

She felt bad for them, that nature had taken away their loving home and put her there in its place that they’d been pulled from her uterus and placed in her arms, where she was the only thing standing between them and oblivion, them and failure, them and disappointment. But rest is in short supply to a new mum, and Lauren is struggling to cope.īack home, Lauren is overwhelmed with anxiety for her babies’ safety. Hospital staff and husband, Patrick, brush off Lauren’s fears, she just needs rest, that’s all. Lauren is convinced a strange woman is out to switch Lauren’s newborn twins for changelings. Melanie Golding with her debut, Little DarlingsĪ creepy psychological thriller shot through with dark folklore.

Little Darlings by Melanie Golding