I received an ARC of Baby Factory by Suleiman Ocheni through Netgalley so extended thanks to the Author, Publishers and Netgalley for allowing me a copy in return for an honest review.
Aleeza Kalu’s story begins with the birth of her child, a little girl she calls Remy. She spends a long time counting and re-counting the baby’s fingers and toes, and notes the cornucopia shaped birthmark on the baby’s big toe. Her ex-boyfriend arrives, as he’s only just been told by Aleeza’s best friend that Remy even exists. He wants to meet his daughter, however, Aleeza refuses, and has the nurse take the baby away, but Richard refuses to leave.
Several hours later, they get the news that every parent fears. Their daughter has died. Though Aleeza’s Nigerian cultural customs say not to look at the baby, she can’t believe that her perfect daughter has died, and she insists on seeing her. When the baby is brought to her, she says Remy looks wrong, and is told that is due to the pallor of death. But when Aleeza spends time looking the baby over, she notices that the birthmark is missing, and she KNOWS that this isn’t her baby.
People, even those closest to her, are insisting that grief is making her paranoid, and after the police seem to agree with them, she decides to handle it on her own. This fast-paced, engaging thriller is full of twists and turns.
The plot of the novel happens organically, and, nothing feels forced or like the author wrote it just for the purpose of keeping the reader in suspense or to put meat on the bones. The plot was fast paced with an important event or piece of information appearing on every page.
The characters were all original and I fell in love with all of them ever the ones that should have been easy to dislike, a rare feat and shows how good the author is at developing characters and storyline. The protagonist Aleeza in particular is a very relatable and human character who makes mistakes, has regrets and has to learn from them in order to grow as a human being and learn to trust others and just believe that that they will come through for her.
All considered I found the book surprisingly good, especially as it was the cover that first attracted me and the blurb secondly. I enjoyed immersing myself into Aleeza’s world and I would often feel like I was racing around the clock with her to solve the mystery before it was too late.
The issues of trust building and learning to trust, love and loss make this a heart-wrenching and painful read and this resonated with me especially as I have lost a child but the moments of hope that shine through like the rays of sunshine through the dark clouds are a perfect representation of the sunshine through the rain that never gets better, but allows a grieving parent to hope.
This is one of the best books that I have read this year and I would recommend this book to readers and I awarded it 4.5 stars.
fictionvixenreads 