2024 Best Book Awards Winner in Best New Fiction
2024 American Fiction Awards Winner in Mystery/Suspense: General
Not Yours to Keep
A Novel
Description
SheKnows.com “The 19 Best Books We Read in 2024” * Zibby Awards Winner: Best Family Drama Category * Shelf Unbound 2024 Best Indie Books NOTABLE INDIE * 2024 Somerset Awards short list for Literary and Contemporary Fiction
Called a “sensational debut” by Rea Frey, this psychological thriller delves into themes of reproductive rights and healthcare, confronting the complexities that define family—or the risks that lose it all.
Billie Campbell, a Massachusetts adoption specialist grappling with fertility issues, dreams of adopting a baby, but not just any baby—her pregnant client’s baby. While her longing threatens to send her down a dark path, her husband, Tyler, is keeping secrets: he’s full of doubts about becoming a father, and he’s also trying to figure out who is sending him upsetting anonymous texts and photos. On the other side of town, Anne, a woman scarred by childhood abuse, obsesses with a second chance at becoming a family with the two people she regrets ever having let go of: the baby she gave up for adoption twenty years ago and the man of her dreams.
Their lives become entangled when the client’s newborn is abducted, and Billie becomes a prime suspect.
Amid the chaos unleashed by the abduction, Tyler uncovers a link between the person tormenting him and the abduction—but now Billie has disappeared too. The race to find both her and the baby is on; but will they find them before it’s too late?
Reviews
“Two women are pulled together by their complicated relationships to motherhood in the tense but humane thriller Not Yours to Keep…whose suspense is directed by the intense emotions brought forth by the loss—or unrealized gain—of a child.”—Foreword Clarion Review
“An often intriguing narrative about loss and enduring hope.”—Kirkus Reviews
“Part emotional story of adoption and motherhood, and part heart-pounding suspense, Not Yours To Keep will have you racing to the end as you are swept into the lives of three people on a collision course.”—Lyn Liao Butler, best-selling author of Someone Else's Life