Pages: 323
Read synopsis on Goodreads
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You know how sometimes you read a book that everyone is raving about but it doesn’t click for you? That’s how What Was Mine by Helen Klein Ross was for me. It started out promising and I devoured the first half of the book but by the end I was left feeling a bit deflated. In hindsight, this is partly because the synopsis gives away pretty much the entire book and partly because I found some of it to be unbelievable.
“Tragedy happens to lots of people. You can decide to let it destroy you, or you can decide to move on.”
What Was Mine is about a woman who kidnaps a baby girl and raises her, only for her secret to get out. What follows is that the daughter finds out, makes contact with her birth mother, and the consequences the kidnapped mom faces when it all goes public (all of which is in the synopsis). I loved the first half, which was mostly about how and why a woman would kidnap a baby, what that meant for her life going forward, and the fear that it would all blow up in her face. The second half, which was about the daughter learning about what had happened to her, is where What Was Mine missed the mark for me.
Frankly, I found the daughter’s reunion with her birth mother to be implausible. Granted, I’ve never been kidnapped and can’t speak on this authoritatively, but it all seemed too black and white and lacked the depth and development that I came to expect after such a well-rounded first half of a book. This black and white dichotomy played out again when comparing the biological mother with the kidnapper mother. There were also some loose ends and characters that were introduced and hurriedly dismissed in awkward ways that left me wishing there was more to it. If you’d like to see my spoiler thoughts on this, click here:
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Despite the issues I had with this book, I’d still recommend it. It has gotten a lot of rave reviews and I did read it fairly quickly, not to mention I thoroughly enjoyed the first half. Although I had issues with the second half, they were my own issues and do not appear to be the norm. There were also a few Law & Order references, which is always fun to see, and some great lines, such as, “Sometimes you have to choose from two wrong choices. Sometimes, the right choice is which choice feels the least wrong.”
If you’d like to read some of these rave reviews I’ve mentioned, check out My Novel Opinion or any of the 5-star reviews on Goodreads.