by Christina McDonald
Abigail “Abi” Knight is woken from a deep sleep in the darkest hours of the morning by a call from a hospital: Her 17-year-old daughter Olivia has been in an accident.
When she arrives, she learns Olivia has somehow fallen off a bridge and sustained massive head trauma. She’s brain dead. But she’s also pregnant, so legally doctors cannot remove her from life support until the baby can be delivered viably.
For Abi, this is unimaginable. Her beautiful, popular, smart, athletic daughter couldn’t be in this situation. She couldn’t be near death. She couldn’t be pregnant. There had to be an explanation for what happened to her.
Could the father of her baby have done this? And who could that be? Was it an accident as the police are suggesting? Was it murder?
Mother and daughter have similar histories. Abi herself became pregnant while in college by a man who didn’t want to have anything to do with the baby. He, in fact, gave Abi a large check to get an abortion. The man, Gavin Montgomery, has become a rising politician. Abi has always been secretive about Olivia’s father.
Could Olivia’s intensifying interest in her father have gotten her killed?
Against the mystery of how Olivia fell is the looming tragedy that she will taken off of life support as soon as her baby is able to survive on its own.
This is a perfect escapist book filled with thrills, chills, drama and trauma. There are moments where it’s hard to suspend disbelief: what concerned mother fails to turn over her daughter’s cell phone to the police for a month? Or check her daughter’s iCloud account? What 17-year-old knows how to find a DNA lab and has the resources to pay for a comparison of her own and her suspected father’s DNA?
Even so, you’ll keep reading until you find out what happened the night Olivia fell.
About the Author: Christina McDonald
After earning a bachelor’s degree in communications from the University of Washington, Seattle, she earned a master’s degree in journalism from the National University of Ireland, Galway. She has worked for USATODAY.com, The Sunday Times, Dublin, and Expedia.
Formerly from Seattle, McDonald now lives in London with her husband, two son and dog, Tango.