Sam Vickery

The Child at My Door by Sam Vickery is a highly recommended domestic thriller that exposes a family's secrets.

When a taxi drops off a four-year-old boy at her door, Clarissa knows is shocked. When the taxi driver and the boy both identify her as the grandma, she knows it's a mistake but has the boy, named Tommy, come in for them to sort it out and find his mother. When she asks, Tommy tells her his mom said to call her Grandma and he says his mom is called Chloe. Clarissa's daughter Chloe left home fifteen years ago and she has told everyone that Chloe died. If Chloe is alive, where has she been for the last fifteen years?

There is no doubt that once you start reading The Child at My Door it soon becomes un-put-downable. Once this well-written thriller starts it builds slowly but steadily until you can't turn the pages quickly enough. You will find yourself glued to the pages to see what happens next. Readers will quickly learn that Tommy was sent to his previously unknown grandmother because her daughter is in an abusive relationship with his father, Scott, and she needs to protect Tommy. While some issues are clear in the novel, others are more obscure and hidden under layers of secrets and lies.

But all isn't quite as it seems with Clarrisa or Chloe and neither seems to be a reliable narrator. Chapters alternate between the two and also between the past and present. Soon questions will arise about what really happened fifteen years ago and why are the neighbors, Mirium and Jeff, so concerned about the boy and her caring for him? Are they really noisy neighbors or do they have reasons to be concerned. A complicated backstory soon emerges.

Admittedly, you have to agree to set disbelief aside and just follow where Vickery decides to take you and what information will be revealed in the plot. I did guess some major plot elements early on, but there were several surprises and some great slight of hand along the way that had me doubting my intuition. This is an entertaining novel.
Thanks to Bookouture and NetGalley for providing me with an advance reader's copy. My review is voluntary and expresses my honest opinion.
http://www.shetreadssoftly.com/2024/01/the-child-at-my-door.html… (más)

The book starts when a pregnant Katherine and her husband Davis are having dinner at Katherine’s mother Hazel’s house, and Katherine’s waters break. Rushed to hospital she awakes to learn she has a healthy baby boy, but she was pregnant with twins but she kept it a secret from her mother, wanting to surprise her when they were born. As if losing a child is not enough, all Katherine’s hopes and dreams of a big family are dashed when she is told that she cannot have any more children. She can’t even talk about the baby she lost, because only her and Davis know.
Added to that is the tense relationship between Katherine and Hazel that seems that it will never get better. Katherine resents her for mollycoddling her. Hazel doesn’t understand why the resentment, she was trying to do right by her daughter, to protect her. Then there is Davis who also doesn’t see eye to eye with Hazel. It is a family in turmoil.
Told in multiple perspectives, Hazel‘s from the past, her marriage, how she lives through that period of her life and also in the present, lots of secrets are lingering and they do eventually come out. Katherine’s perspective is very different, it was so sad, heart wrenching, how she deals with the loss and grief of her baby girl, coming to terms with not being able to have another biological child and her determination to add to her family.

This book did have me in tears several times throughout it. It was a tough read, perhaps because I am a mother, I don’t know. I just felt a deep sadness that did eventually life as the book went on.
It was very well written, in a true to life way, of a mother and daughter relationship that went off the rails and how they manage to rebuild it eventually. It was so emotional so grab your tissues before starting it. But be warned, just as you think it’s safe to put the tissues away, you will need them again.
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