Delicate Condition
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3.7 • 6 Ratings
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
'Shockingly real, twisty and dark' - INDEPENDENT
'Tense, thrilling and darkly comedic' - HEAT
'The feminist update to Rosemary's Baby we all needed' - ANDREA BARTZ
I wanted this baby so badly.
But she may be the death of me...
Anna Alcott is desperate to have a family. But as she tries to balance her public life as an actress with a gruelling IVF regime, she starts to suspect that someone is going to great lengths to make sure that never happens. Medicines are lost. Appointments are moved. She's sure she's being followed. And when she finally does get pregnant, someone steals the precious ultrasound photograph of her baby. But despite everything she's gone through, not even her husband is willing to believe that someone is playing twisted games with her.
Then her doctors tell her she's lost the baby. Despite her grief, Anna ignores them - because she can still feel the baby moving, can see the toll it's taking on her body. Isolated in a remote snowbound town, Anna is sure that whoever has been following her is closing in on her and her unborn child. As her symptoms become more terrifying, she can't help but wonder what exactly is growing inside her. And why no-one will listen when she says that something is horribly wrong...
'A timely, terrifying, heartfelt thriller' - CHRIS WHITAKER
'Perfectly terrifying & terrifyingly perfect' - JANICE HALLETT
'A thrilling, visceral read' - HEATHER DARWENT
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Dreams of motherhood turn to nightmares in this unflinching adult debut from the pseudonymous Valentine (YA author Danielle Vega, the Merciless series). Anna Alcott, 39, is preparing to wind down her moderately successful acting career as she and her husband begin a third, last-ditch round of IVF. Then her latest movie unexpectedly hits big, and Anna finds herself campaigning for an Oscar while juggling a torturous medical regimen. When Anna nearly misses her egg retrieval surgery due to a calendar app typo, she blames her hectic schedule. Then the details of her embryo transfer appointment change even as she's looking at her calendar, and she begins to fear that someone is stalking her. Anna succeeds in getting pregnant, but after her Brooklyn apartment is broken into while she's napping, she and her husband decamp to snowy, deserted Southampton, Long Island. Her stalker continues tormenting her, however, leaving messages and voodoo dolls in Anna's path. As she develops harrowing symptoms including hair loss and hallucinations that her husband and obstetrician dismiss, she fears for both her baby's safety and her own sanity. The book's length and madcap denouement diminish the visceral urgency of the first-person narrative, but Valentine successfully mines pregnancy's horrors for dramatic effect while condemning condescension toward, and ignorance of, women's struggles with fertility and childbearing. It adds up to a fiercely feminist millennial heir to Rosemary's Baby.
