When a mysterious note arrives for seven months pregnant nurse Eliana Hughes, she begins to doubt every aspect of her life – from her mixed feelings about motherhood to her marriage to Martin, who has become distant in recent months.
As the person behind the note escalates their campaign to out Eli’s husband as a cheat, she finds herself unable to trust even her own instincts, and as pressure builds, she makes a mistake that jeopardises her entire future.
Elsewhere, someone is watching. Someone who desperately wants a baby to call their own and will go to any lengths to become a mother – and stay a mother…
I'd like to thank Sabah at Avon Books for inviting me to be a part of this blog tour and for my copy of Apple of My Eye to review.
Despite buying a copy of her previous psychological thriller Her Name was Rose which I've not had a chance to read yet, Apple of My Eye is my first experience of Claire Allan as a thriller writer having previously read and enjoyed all her previous romantic comedy and contemporary books. And having recently finished reading this book I can honestly stay that for me it's her best to date, it was a menacing, tension filled read that had me rapidly turning the pages waiting for, but at the same time not wanting, everything to play out as I was reading.
The story is narrated from the viewpoints of three main characters; Eliana (Eli) who is seven months pregnant with her first child, Louise - a young woman who is struggling to cope with the loss of her baby, and Angela - Eli's mum. This multi narrator format worked really well to give us an overall picture as we get to see how their different experiences of pregnancy and motherhood affects, has affected, them and everyone close to them.
Expecting your first much-loved child should be an enjoyable experience for a woman, and in the latter stages a time for nesting to prepare for the baby's arrival, but sadly this is not the case for Eli who has been sick as a dog throughout her pregnancy. So when strange things start happening casting doubts on her husband Martin's fidelity, it's no wonder that the stress and anxiety are making her even sicker. I really felt for Eli and could totally understand her paranoia as to who she could and could not trust and my heart really went out to her when her mental and physical state started to cause problems for her at work with dire consequences, it's a situation that no-one would ever want to be in and was Eli's living nightmare.
But it was the accounts from the mysterious Louise's perspective that really ramped up the tension and created a real sense of paranoia as we discover what has driven her to this point in her life, she was clearly a desperate woman in pain but at the same time her actions were totally despicable. And then there is Angela who offers her daughter support albeit in an overbearing and somewhat suffocating manner. She was not a character that I ever really warmed to and the more I read, the more I began to understand why I was feeling the way I did about her.
As the story unfolded I flew through the final third of this book as I wanted to see if my suspicions were correct, and even though I had guessed correctly, the way it all played out in the final chapters was truly shocking. Claire Allan has definitely found her writing niche and fortunately we don't have too long to wait for another book from her in this genre as Forget Me Not is published at the end of May.
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