Book Review: Someone Else’s Child

Lucy Wakefield is an ordinary woman who longs for a baby – a longing that tears her marriage apart and leaves her searching desperately for a child that might need adoption. A trip to Ikea leads her to an abandoned baby girl, who she first takes outside to escape the chill of the air-conditioning, and then takes home.

The deed is done. The child has been stolen. She is Lucy’s now, and Mia – as she is renamed – grows up to believe the story that everyone else has been told. This was a legal adoption. Mia’s mother wanted her to go to a good home.

Meanwhile, the birth mother, Marilyn, is frantic, then depressed, and eventually reinvents herself as a semi-irritating New Ager. She remarries – her first marriage, like Lucy’s, cannot withstand the pain of childlessness – and has three more children.

When Mia is twenty-one, she discovers the truth. Cue moral dilemma time: is Lucy a monster for having made one bad decision, even though she’s been a caring mother since? Can Marilyn ever be Mia’s real mother again?

Told in alternating viewpoints, including sidebars from minor characters, this is a Picoult-esque tale of what it means to be a mother and what it means to be a good mother. A page-turner, with solid prose: nothing too extraordinary here but a diverting read.