No Child of Mine (The No Child of Mine Trilogy Book 1)

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I very much enjoyed this book. The child abuse was difficult to read about, but in a very real world, it does happen. I thought the author did an excellent job explaining it without going into graphic detail. Its is also wrong on many social work fronts, for example the author seems not to be aware that the police have a specialist child protection units based in many big towns with nationwide coverage. These people are specialist trained to interview children of all ages in similar circumstances to that in the book along with social workers, because in child abuse a crime may have been committed along with harm to the child.

I am glad that the author put in so much detail about the abuse and what was happening. A lot of other reviewers complained about this but I do think it was important to really get a picture of what was going on. Like I said before it would not have seemed as real if she left out the details. There are bad things that happen in the world, not everything is roses everyday for everyone! If you want pretty - read a Romance. Alex trusts her instincts, and she follows up a phone call about Ottilie Wade and senses that all is not well with the child. The mother is very strange and the father is domineering and seemingly holding down a very respectable job as a deputy head at a local school. The more Alex knows of him the more she suspects. She soon is keeping a close eye on Ottilie, but things move slowly and social workers have to play by the book. One day, when she was at the park with her sister and niece and nephew, Alex spotted a little girl alone and went to talk to her, the little girl didn’t talk, just started at Alex, then her father came, and with a smile told to Alex that his daughter was shy. Not knowing why, Alex felt that something in the little girl’s behaviour wasn’t quite right, dismissed as beginning paranoid, she told herself that not all children are abuse.

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I know they don't know where she is right now," Anna whispered, brushing the hair from Alex's eyes, "but that doesn't mean..." "She's here," Alex sobbed wretchedly. "She's upstairs." An awful curse born of both love and selfishness has taken fathers from their daughters for generations in Essie's family. I had hoped there would be some spookiness in Essie's new house but other than some whispering and an object occasionally being displaced nothing much happened. I thought that when the curse began to take hold of the family, this is when the Horror/Creepy part of the story would reveal itself. Sadly, there wasn't any suspense. The ending seemed too easily wrapped up since so many generations had suffered this curse. It just felt rushed to me. And in a way, the babies were right; who were they but pieces of their mother stitched together into a tiny, new body?” The writing and flow worked very well. There are just hints of darkness and scares around the corner every time Essie is at home. All while this struggle is happening, another narrative keeps popping in. It’s from centuries ago, and tells of the strife of women and family before our liberation. I had a hard time figuring out where this played into the main story, until they merged in a very creepy supernatural way. From that point the book goes in another direction and becomes a ghost story mashup. I was totally all in at this point.

I enjoyed the writing and I will definitely read more by this author. This story just didn’t quite resonate with me the way I was anticipating. I thank for not having very graphic scenes, because that would make the movie even more "unwatchable". In any case, the abuses are quite clear, disturbing and well insinuated not needing to show explicit images.What this book needed was Sanjay's POV, because the slow-burn story with Essie's POV was not working for me. I would have removed most of the interrupting chapters from Ana and Isabel, which are a past narrative and most of their history is not required, and add Sanjay's POV. Maybe to show his change of emotion or show what was changing his personality. The reason I say this is because it wasn't shown vividly enough through Essie's POV. The observations weren't strong enough. Maybe it was written this way to add intrigue and suspense. But Essie's reactions were strong enough to add the suspense I needed.