Book Review: Because of You by Dawn French

This was my first NetGalley read in a while! I love Dawn French and was expecting great things from her new release, but actually felt a bit disappointed by this one. 

Hope and Anna both find themselves in the hospital and about to give birth on the same day, 1st January 2000. When Hope suffers a tragic stillbirth, she takes Anna's sleeping baby on the way out of the hospital and tells her family and friends that she is her own. Meanwhile, Anna and her husband wake to find their baby gone, and a nationwide investigation begins.

The baby, named Minnie by Hope, lives a happy life with Hope, in a secure, loving and supportive family environment. They have a close bond, but Hope lives with the weight of her lie sitting heavily on her shoulders and knows that, at some stage, she will have to come clean. When Minnie falls pregnant, Hope knows that it's now or never.

I'll start with the positives. I liked that both Hope's story and Anna's story are given equal attention in the novel. Hope is a grieving mother; having lost her daughter in childbirth she is completely traumatised. Anna wakes up to find that someone has stolen her child. Dawn French has made a conscious decision here to shine a spotlight on Hope, the woman who is essentially the villain of the piece, having kidnapped another woman's child. We learn of her background, her hopes and dreams, and the devastation that led to her making the split second decision to take Minnie. And yet Hope never refers to what she did as a mistake. She knows it was wrong, but how can she say that the 18 years spent with her beautiful daughter have been a mistake? I thought it was handled sensitively and it was good to see an alternative interpretation to how a case like this would usually be written about or portrayed.

Something I found quite hard to engage with was Minnie's reaction to the news when Hope comes clean with her. She's initially shocked, but within a couple of hours seems completely over it. Likewise, Anna seems to feel no resentment towards Hope, even asking Hope's permission to see Minnie. Many readers would read this and wonder why Anna needs to ask permission to see her own daughter from the woman who kidnapped her? I can appreciate that after 18 years of not knowing, Anna may feel very differently about how to approach the situation and doesn't want to fight, but it just felt a little off to me. 

3/5 stars.