This review is written with thanks to Pigeonhole for the opportunity to read and review Call Me Mummy.

Blurb:

Glamorous, beautiful Mummy has everything a woman could want. Except for a daughter of her very own. So when she sees Kim – heavily pregnant, glued to her phone and ignoring her eldest child in a busy shop – she does what anyone would do. She takes her. But foul-mouthed little Tonya is not the daughter that Mummy was hoping for.

As Tonya fiercely resists Mummy’s attempts to make her into the perfect child, Kim is demonised by the media as a ‘scummy mummy’, who deserves to have her other children taken too. Haunted by memories of her own childhood and refusing to play by the media’s rules, Kim begins to spiral, turning on those who love her.

Though they are worlds apart, Mummy and Kim have more in common than they could possibly imagine. But it is five-year-old Tonya who is caught in the middle…

CALL ME MUMMY. IT’LL BE BETTER IF YOU DO.

Review:

Call Me Mummy is Baker’s first novel, and you may need time for this to sink in as you read. The writing is so clever and so accomplished.

Each character has a distinctive voice and this is shown by a different narrator for each chapter. Although Tonya’s chapters were typically shorter than the others I loved her voice and her feistiness that comes through even when she is struggling. The different chapters give us insight into what each character is really thinking. I loved the way that the characters are not black and white: Kim has had her child abducted but is definitely no saint and Mummy has abducted a child but has her own demons. I loved exploring these situations in a deeper way.

As you would expect with a novel that focuses on child abduction, Baker takes us to some dark places, even darker than I had anticipated. As the plot progressed, I became so engaged with the story that I didn’t want the staves to end!

There are lots of novels in this genre about missing children and this one stands out in a very busy crowd. I can’t wait to see what the author does next!

Call Me Mummy is available from Amazon.