Book Review: Hold My Girl by Charlene Carr

Tess and Katherine are two women who could not be any more different but they have one thing in common, they both desperately want to have a child. Katherine is married and has spent most of her life trying to be perfect, obsessing over her home and family looking perfect. The one thing that’s missing is a child. Tess is recently divorced, estranged from her family and generally unhappy. Both women underwent IVF a year ago at the same hospital. Katherine’s resulted in a baby girl, while Tess had a stillborn.

A year later, Katherine is about to celebrate her daughter, Rose’s first birthday while Tess is still grieving her loss. Katherine, who is biracial (half black/half white) has been harboring a secret fear due to her daughter’s pale skin and bright blue eyes and her fear is confirmed when both women receive a call from the fertility clinic letting them know that their eggs were switched. This starts the story of one woman’s life falling apart while the other thinks it’s a start of a new life for her and Carr takes us on a journey for the battle for Rose.

This book had me thinking hard – in a good way! I really enjoyed it. For me, it was a unique story in that I haven’t read anything with this storyline and that in itself is surprising as it seems like a very likely thing to happen. There were so many layers to the story that I cannot give away without spoilers but I truly kept going back and forth on who has the right to Rose? What makes a mother? One person carried her to term and raised her for a year but the other is biologically her mother.

The author is a black Canadian woman and I expected more in terms of Katherine’s race and how it played into the battle – in court and within her husband’s family. I also wish we got as much of Katherine’s parents as we did of her husband’s family. That being said, Tess was fully developed and we definitely understood every facet of her life and what made her who she is today. Carr did a good job of navigating multiple narratives with multiple characters and also time spans without it feeling bogged down.

While I highly recommend this book, I do want to let you know that there are some trigger warnings with topics of rape and infertility. Ultimately the book is about motherhood. Being able to be one, the journey to being one, the longing to be one when your body betrays you and all the side effects it comes with. This book is definitely one that would be a great one to discuss with others.

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