“I don’t know how to tell you what I did.” This is the start of a letter a midwife writes before her suicide. Her two best friends are going through her things and they discover a terrible secret that will destroy everything it touches because the author wants to shoe horn as much tragedy and drama into one book as possible. As you can sense from my tone, I didn’t like this book too much. My first problem was with the title. There was no confession. Curiosity killed the cat and its whole family. This was the Midwife’s Fuck Up.
Spoilers. Duh.
Tara and Emerson are going through Noelle’s things. Noelle is the midwife. Noelle delivered Emerson’s baby after numerous miscarriages. Noelle also delivered Tara’s baby at home. It was a difficult birth in the dead of night. Both mother and baby almost died. Tara lost both of her parents in a car accident and then she lost her husband. Count it: three people die in car accidents! Noelle also was a surrogate a number of times without her best friends knowing. Noelle also slept with one her best friend’s husband. I’ve not even touched upon the big fat secret yet! It was all too much. No one in this book had it easy or was happy in the slightest. Maybe Noelle because she no longer had to suffer under the author’s venomous ink.
It was all too much. There was no subtly or shades of grey. Every part of Tara and Emerson lives were tainted and not just by Noelle! I couldn’t take it seriously as a book. Although it did make me cry. In my defence, the language at the end was very emotive. It was also unrealistic. How can you find out your best friend dropped and killed your baby, and then replaced it with a comatose woman’s child, without swearing at least once?! They spoke in sweeping statements of instant forgiveness and declarations of love. The whole book stunk like a TV movie.
Watch my video review: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKr39hTrkRA
Charlie Emma Hay 