The Baby Monitor by Rosie Walker
Genre: Psychological thriller, Domestic thriller, Suspense
Read: 25th January 2024
Publish: 1st February 2024
★★★★ 4 stars
DESCRIPTION:
I’m closing my daughter’s bedroom door after putting her to bed and saying I love her one last time, when I hear the baby monitor crackle to life. The voice sends shockwaves to my core: ‘Your mother doesn’t love you.’
My husband says it’s just exhaustion and I’m hearing things. But he has no idea what that voice is doing to Olivia. He doesn’t see the look in my daughter’s eyes as she pushes me away and says, ‘I want my other mother.’
Then Olivia plunges down the stairs screaming. In my worst nightmares, I never imagined I could come so close to losing my child. As I watch Olivia sleep in a hospital bed, her broken arm in a sling, I decide this has to stop. Someone unscrewed our baby gate from the wall. I know I’ve been unwell in the past, but I’m not making this up.
The only people who’ve been inside our house are the ones I thought I could trust. Someone close is watching me, speaking to Olivia and trying to make me look like a bad parent. I don’t care what my husband says. I’m more scared than I’ve ever been in my life, but my precious child means everything to me. They have no idea how far I’ll go to protect my daughter…
An absolutely gripping and addictive psychological thriller that will keep you turning the pages until late into the night. If you love The Housemaid, Gone Girl or The Woman in the Window, you’ll adore The Baby Monitor.
MY THOUGHTS:
I hear a voice speaking to my child...'Your mother doesn't love you'...
I thoroughly enjoyed Rosie Walker's first two thrillers "Secrets of a Serial Killer" and "The House Fire", both of which were phenomenal! So I had high expectations for this one. It didn't disappoint, on the whole, but the ending lacked a little in execution. And left me with a few questions (something of a pet peeve of mine as I like things to be neatly tied up). Don't get me wrong, this is a fantastic story and at times it was decidedly creepy. I still really enjoyed it for the most part.
An addictive thriller with a solid storyline, and coming off the backs of the author's first two, I was excited to dive into this domestic thriller extraordinaire. But her previous two were a lot darker than this one taking instead a domestic approach with creepy messages and a ton of gaslighting. The question is...who is behind it all?
Miriam and Jeremy's family is now complete with 5 year old Liv and now newborn baby Samuel to add to the fold. Ever since they discovered Miriam was pregnant, they have worked hard at preparing little Liv for the new addition reiterating that she will be a big sister to her new baby brother. But from the moment they come home, their perfectly curated plan (and lives) fall to pieces. Liv refuses to have anything to do with the baby insisting she didn't want him and asking when were his real mummy and daddy coming to get him. It broke Miriam's heart to see her daughter reject her little brother and the confusing emotions she must be feeling about his sudden appearance. She has been an only child for five years, has had her parents' sole attention for all of that time. Suddenly there is a new baby that will inevitably take their attention away from her...and she doesn't like it one bit.
But it's as Miriam closes the bedroom door to Liv's room on the way out that she hears a disembodied voice whisper to her daughter "She's lying. Your mother doesn't love you."
Miriam is furious. Who is talking to her daughter and filling her head with lies? A quick glance around the nursery and her eyes fall on the new WiFi baby monitor. Could that be the culprit? Is someone watching her every move and speaking to Liv that way? But when she tries to voice her concerns to Jeremy he doesn't believe her. He immediately thinks she is imagining things, it's an auditory hallucination brought on by Samuel's birth and a pre-cursor to post partum psychosis, which she suffered badly after Liv's birth.
So what does Jeremy do? He gathers her friends, her mum and himself and has her sent to a "retreat" but basically it is a private mental health facility, for two weeks. During that time Liv refuses to join in the daily video calls and visits. The one time she does visit she punches Miriam in the face then insists "Can we visit my other mummy now?" Miriam feels the sting of rejection not only from Liv but also Samuel who she has ached to breastfeed since admission to the facility but when she unbuttons her blouse Samuel rejects her too. Jeremy, in his stupid wisdom, gave him a bottle of formula before coming into the visiting room. Why would he do that? He knows Miriam wanted to breastfeed him. And he organised for a state of the art breast pump to be supplied so she could express every day and freeze her milk which would later be delivered to Jeremy to feed him with. And he feeds him formula? I could slap that guy from the very first moment for his stupid behaviour.
When Miriam is finally discharged, she returns home to find that she is under continued surveillance. Hidden cameras everywhere. Her house has suddenly become a smart home which she has no control over. The only consolation is that Jeremy had disposed of the baby monitor and now she has a cheaper non-WiFi model so that no one can hack in and whisper lies to her little girl. Miriam doesn't know who to trust or who to confide in? Who is watching her? And why? What do they want?
There is so much going on in this story, some of which you will have to suspend belief while others will leave you scratching your head. Both Jeremy and Miriam were clueless and failed to talk to each other. He automatically dismisses her claims as being part of a psychosis and rejects anything she has to say without actually listening to her. Miriam wasn't much better but at least she was better than Jeremy and Liv put together. That child was like the devil incarnate. She made my blood boil behaving like a spoilt princess. I'm the oldest in my family and I was excited about my baby brother's arrival. I certainly didn't behave like that.
And then there is the gaslighting. That is on a whole other level. It sometimes makes for uncomfortable reading because you sympathise with Miriam as no one is listening to her, which then leaves her questioning herself and her own sanity.
I knew who was behind it almost from the start. But then when the ending came it left things a little confusing. Who was actually to blame? We are given a couple of suspects at the end but it's not really clear which of them was actually the guilty party.
POSSIBLE SPOILER AHEAD
And there was the whole hidden network thing. Miriam was told that whoever set it up knew exactly what they were doing and it was beyond her husband's and her friend's expertise. So the two suspects we are given, how did they have the nous to set up an entire hidden network and then remove it with barely a trace? It doesn't make any sense. It would make a little more sense for one of them but I still question their actual knowledge when others had a lot more. I really couldn't get my head around that and it's for this reason I had to knock off a star. Throughout the entire book it was five stars all the way...until I got to the end.
Misgivings aside, this was a taut tense and thrilling read. I devoured the entire book in one day. It is compelling addicive and wholly entertaining.
I would like to thank #RosieWalker, #Netgalley and #Bookouture for an ARC of #TheBabyMonitor in exchange for an honest review.
MEET THE AUTHOR:
She also has an undergraduate degree in Psychology from Lancaster University, where she learned how to pull an all-nighter to hit a deadline right at the last minute.
She lives in Edinburgh with her husband Kevin, daughter Elsie and their dog Bella.
Social Media links:
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