Tucked inside this story’s gothic envelope is a tale inspired by a horrific chapter in the history of obstetric medicine ... The genius of the novel is the way Beams continually intertwines fictional elements with true-to-life obstetric practices.
[A] captivating new thriller about a woman’s desperate desire for motherhood and the creation of new identities, the power of female friendship and the driving crave of success ... This is Beams’ second novel; and like her previous work, she writes with her eyes wide open, completely unafraid to embrace the macabre. Her careful writing flows beautifully as it explores the shadowy side of Irene’s thoughts and actions, examining the underbelly of every event that occurs. The influence of Frances Hodgson Burnett’s childhood masterpiece The Secret Garden also quietly echoes throughout this novel. But where Burnett’s garden was a representation of willful suppression seen through the lens of innocent childhood, Beams’ garden exists in a grown-up’s world—where life does not come without death, where light is never far from darkness. Beams is also acutely gifted at presenting the thoughts that every mother has grappled with at one point or another: After all, even the healthiest babies are not born without some measure of pain ... fast-moving, yet meticulous in its descriptions, and is a showcase for Beams’ clear talent. Her masterful depictions of presence and place are luminescent, and readers will be transfixed by the novel’s lush, gorgeous writing and the seamless flow of this relevant meditation on motherhood.
While many authors have explored the way the pregnant body is a haunted body, Beams’ writing sets her apart, shimmering against the dark subject matter ... Where a lesser writer might have fallen back on ableist tropes of "monstrous" children, Beams treats her subject with a careful moral imagination.
Beams adeptly conjures the clinic’s heightened atmosphere, populated as it is by desperate pregnant women willing to subject themselves to just about anything to birth healthy babies ... The author’s fans will delight in this inspired and unsettling work.
