Blog Tour Review, The Homemaker

I pull back the blanket to take another peek at my beautiful baby boy. My heart flatlines. He isn’t there. “Where is he?” I cry, my whole body trembling. But my husband just shakes his head. “Darling… we don’t have a baby.”

What is he talking about? Stumbling to my feet, I look frantically at the highchair, the playmat in the corner, the sofa. I need to find my little boy.

Limbs like ice, I rush toward the stairs, shouting my son’s name. But my husband grabs my arms and gently reminds me there is no baby here.

I can’t listen. I don’t understand how our child isn’t in our home. I don’t know who could have taken him. I just know I have to find him.

Climbing the stairs two at a time, my hand is already stretching toward the nursery door, but my husband overtakes, blocking my way.

He forces me to face him. I think I can hear the baby mobile over the crib. I can practically smell the newborn smell. But my husband sighs and shakes his head.

He says it again, firmly this time, as a tear tracks down my cheek: “We don’t have a baby.”

I blink rapidly, my breathing ragged. I think he expects me to agree. But I know that my son is real. I can feel his weight in my arms. And I will stop at nothing to get him back…

An absolutely gripping psychological thriller that will have your heart racing. Prepare yourself for jaw-dropping, mind-blowing twists! Perfect for fans of addictive page-turners like The Housemaid, The Family Across the Street and The Family Upstairs.

My Review

Holy cow!  There’s a lot going on in this book without it seeming that way.  A domestic thriller at its best.  There are multiple narrators and multiple timelines and for a while I had absolutely no idea where this was going and didn’t mind.  For the first bit of the book it almost seemed more like a neighborhood drama book, but of course it was the layered psychological suspense story promised in the synopsis.  We know so much yet also know so little.  A deceased baby, a history of bad things in the neighborhood and neighbors that don’t like each other.  But until it all slowly unravels, you don’t know any details about any of that.  The author does a fantastic job of staging everyone to seem a little unreliable, so I didn’t know who or even when we could trust the narrative.  This is aided with not everyone being a POV character so that you rely on others to tell some character’s story.

I am not sure I particularly liked any of the characters, but I wanted to know what was happening on that street.  The story moved along at a measured pace, making sure I didn’t grow bored, but had to wait for the layers of the neighborhood to peel back and reveal what ultimately happened over the last year.  I was all in.

I both read and listened to this one and liked both equally well.  Stephanie Cannon narrated the audiobook and did what a narrator should, conveyed the book and let it shine,  I was able to tell who the POV character was by her different voices and had to double check and see there weren’t two female narrators that’s a good job

Author Bio

Shari J. Ryan is a USA Today Bestselling Author of Women’s Fiction, WWII Fiction, and 20th Century Historical Fiction with a focus on the Holocaust and Pearl Harbor.

Shortly after graduation from Johnson & Wales with a bachelor’s degree in marketing, Shari began her career as a graphic artist and freelance writer. She then found her passion for writing books in 2012 after her second son was born. Shari has been slaying words ever since.

With two Rone Awards and over 125k books sold, Shari has hit the USA Today Bestseller List, the Amazon’s Top 100, Barnes & Noble’s Top Ten, and iBooks at number one. Some of Shari’s bestselling books include Last Words, The Other Blue Sky, Unspoken Words and A Heart of Time.

Shari, a lifelong Boston girl, is happily married to her personal hero and US Marine and they have two wonderful little boys. For more details about her books, visit: www.sharijryan.com

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