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A Necessary End by Holly Brown
3 Stars
What's It About?
How far would you go to get what you wanted? author, Holly Brown returns with a taut, riveting novel of psychological suspense—a domestic drama full of secrets and twists—about a woman determined to have a child, her ambivalent husband, and a pregnant teenager with a secret agenda of her own.
“I know now that there was no other way things could have turned out. Tragedies are inevitable, just like the great love stories, like us.” Thirty-nine-year-old Adrienne is desperate to be a mother. And this time, nothing is going to get in her way.
At nineteen, Leah bears a remarkable resemblance to the young woman Adrienne once was. Which is why Adrienne knows the baby Leah is carrying is meant to be hers. But Leah’s got ideas of her own: Her baby’s going to get a life in California; why shouldn’t she? All she wants is to live in Adrienne’s house for a year after the baby’s born, and get a fresh start. It seems like a small price for Adrienne to pay to get their baby. And with Gabe suddenly on board, what could possibly go wrong?
What Did I Think?
Holly Brown did a great job of keeping the reader guessing. Nothing was what it seemed to be. The four characters that furnish the points of view in the story are believable but you can see immediately all the mistakes that were being made. You wanted to yell at them to "STOP IT". The baby, Michael was just a chess piece in their individual schemes. The ending was incomplete as far as I was concerned. Of all the many ways this could have concluded it seemed that someone...the author... her editor...someone...chose the one that was the most upsetting and made left the most unanswered.
The book is certainly worth the reading time and will appeal to those that enjoy physiological suspense.
