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“She crawled up on my lap and whispered in her sweet voice,
‘I like hurting people, do you’ “?
Like usual, I picked this book out by the cover and didn’t
read any of the description on the back, but it was listed as a thriller, so I
jumped in. Christopher and Hannah have the perfect life, except for a child.
Hannah has fertility issues, but they are currently in the processes of looking
into adoption. Hannah is a nurse at a hospital where Chris is a surgeon.
One night, a toddler is found wandering the street, covered
in blood, and is brought into the ER. Hannah is working that night, and when
she gets home the next morning, she drops a hint to her husband that he should
go look at the girl when he gets to work. I knew right away that Hannah and Chris
would at least look into fostering the little girl. A couple days after the
girl was admitted, they start to learn her story a little and find out that she
is actually 6 years old and was severely abused, and malnourished. Chris formed
a bond with the little girl, Janie, almost instantly. Chris desperately wanting
Hannah to love the girl like he did, asked Hannah to come meet her one day. Janie
did not take to Hannah like she had Chris, but after awhile warmed up enough to
her, and they filed to become her foster parents while the cops searched for
her birth mother.
Hannah and Chris had family time saved up that they planned
to use when they adopted a baby, so they were both able to take time off to get
Janie settled in. Janie had lots of therapy she had to go to so that was a big
adjustment for them as well, but everything seemed to be going okay. Until
Chris went back to work. Once Chris went back to work Janie started ignoring
Hannah and pretending like she wasn’t even there. Janie would talk to strangers
at the park, and would be so happy when Christopher came home, but wanted
nothing to do with Hannah. When Chris and Hannah made an appointment with their
therapist, she told them that b/c of the severe trauma Janie dealt with in her
past at the hands of her mother, it isn’t a surprise that Janie doesn’t
acknowledge Hannah, and had a better
bond with Christopher.
This is where the book started to piss me off, and I mean
really piss me off. Janie starts acting out but only when Chris is at work.
When Chris returns home from work, Janie is a perfect angel so he doesn’t
believe anything Hannah says about how bad Janie was during the day. There are all
sorts of red flags to show that Janie is a devil child and Chris ignores every
single one of them. He does nothing but defends Janie and thinks his wife is the
one in the wrong. Sure, she isn’t always the victim, but there was plenty of
evidence to show that Hannah wasn’t making this behavior up and instead of
trying to believe his wife, he was convinced she was exaggerating.
Perfect example of Chris siding with the demon child. Janie
hid Hannah’s phone day b/c Hannah took something away of Janie’s. When Chris came
home, Hannah told him he needed to tell Janie to give it back. Convinced that
Janie didn’t take it and that Hannah misplaced it, he helped her look for it. He
ended up finding it in Janie’s room under her bed. But where did he tell Hannah
he found it?! Under the couch cushions….where Hannah had already looked, several
times, so now she was convinced that she was even more crazy than she was. As
someone who had her own battle with PPD this behavior infuriated me b/c this is
how he was ALL THE TIME! Convinced Hannah that she was making things up, and that
Janie was an angel. None of this helped with her PPD or insomnia that she had
also developed since having the new baby that her and Chris were able to get pregnant
with.
I won’t give away the ending, but the last probably 100 pages
or so make me so angry. I loved it, but I found myself cringing at the things
Janie was doing to Hannah and yelling at the clueless husband who was taking
the side of child that had only been in their home for a year, over his own
wife and the safety of their biological child. Chris failed everyone, there
were so many times he could have reported behavior or comments from Janie and
didn’t. All the blood lost in this book falls on Chris’s shoulders.
Some readers on Goodreads were angry b/c this plot line
followed a couple other books, but I haven’t read those books, so I found the
plot horrifying in the best way.
It is so frustrating to be in such a good place mentally and still hate myself same days. Some days I can throw on a pair of expensive jeans and take pictures of myself in the mirror all day long, (seriously, this was 1 of 20 pictures I took, while at work 🤣), admiring my thick thighs and loving that I actually LOVE my "fuller" figure. 
