Then Blythe has another baby – and her anxiety turns to terror. But she can’t love her daughter, who is difficult, manipulative and eventually frightening. Her own maternal line is littered with trauma, neglect and abuse, yet Blythe (a wonderfully sardonic name) still falls in love and gets pregnant. “The women in our family, we’re different,” she says as she recounts her beginnings as a mother. On the cusp of adolescence, Violet is celebrating Christmas with her father, stepmother and baby half-brother, the perfect festive scene of a traditionally happy family Christmas, while Blythe the outsider watches bleakly through falling snow. This terrific debut novel begins with Blythe literally outside in the cold, sitting in her car watching her daughter Violet through the window of the family home. Her own icy and unloving mother, Cecilia, abandoned her and was herself the daughter of an abusive, psychotic woman. Blythe Connor knows bad, even evil, parenting runs in her family. “This excellent psychological domestic thriller is full of tension.
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