Hold My Girl
A Novel
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3.8 • 26 Ratings
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
For fans of Jodi Picoult, Kate Hewitt and Ashley Audrain, a heart-wrenching novel about two women whose eggs are switched during IVF
Katherine is a woman full of obsessions. Everything clean, everything perfect, all the time. After seven years of trying—and failing—to conceive, she finally gives birth to Rose, her IVF miracle child. But she’s afraid that Rose may not be her daughter; her pale skin doesn’t match Katherine’s own.
Tess never got her happy ending. She took on IVF alongside Katherine and a group of hopeful mothers, but her daughter, Hanna, was stillborn. After a series of poor choices, she’s divorced, broke and stuck in a job that’s below her skill set.
Ten months later, Katherine and Tess get a call from the fertility clinic that reveals shocking news: the two women’s eggs were switched. While Katherine’s perfect life beings to crumble around her, for Tess it’s the glimmer of hope she needs to get her life back on track. But it will take a custody battle to decide who deserves to be Rose’s mother, a battle that will push both women to the brink.
With themes of racial identity, loss and betrayal, this emotional novel centred around a difficult moral question beautifully explores the complexities of motherhood.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Carr's moving latest (following 2017's The Stories We Tell) traces a custody battle between two women whose eggs were switched during fertility treatments. After years of trying to conceive, Katherine Matheson and her husband Patrick finally have a child, Rose, who's now almost a year old. Rose is very fair, which has always made Katherine, a mixed-race Black woman, feel self-conscious. Tess Sokolowski, who dropped out of college after a date rape and subsequent abortion, relies heavily on alcohol to drown her sorrows. Her IVF treatments—undertaken after her divorce, at the same clinic as Katherine's—ended in the loss of her stillborn daughter. When Irene, the IVF nurse for both women, suddenly confesses that she purposely swapped their eggs, Tess is overjoyed to learn she has a biological child and reaches out to the Mathesons in hopes of working out a custody agreement. But Katherine is terrified of losing Rose and refuses, leaving the matter to be settled by the courts. As the story unfolds, both women contend with secrets that could destroy their claim to Rose. Though the setup provides enough drama to fuel this page-turner, Carr throws in several over-the-top twists that threaten to derail the proceedings. Still, readers will be transfixed.
Customer Reviews
Loved it!
Excellent book, kept me engaged throughout. So many emotions and thought provoking. Looking forward to reading more of
Charlenes’ works
Absolutely Amazing Book!
I thoroughly enjoyed this book, even though it took me a while to read it due to illness and family issues. The emotions I felt while reading...anger, fear, sympathy, heartache, frustration, sorrow, joy...I can't begin to imagine what Katherine & Tess went through. I think Ms. Carr did a wonderful job writing this story and I had a hard time imagining how it would end. I definitely recommend this book.