Little Disasters: the compelling and thought-provoking new novel from the author of the Sunday Times bestseller Anatomy of a Scandal

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Consulting with a senior doctor, Liz understands that the hospital must contact Social Services regarding Jess and Betsey. You aren’t told how the birth can leave a permanent scar on both the mind and psyche, how the sleepless nights wear you down, and the constant second-guessing of whether you are doing it right.

I was intrigued about the mothers I saw around me: really highly qualified, capable women, flinging so much energy into the cakes they cooked up for school bake sales,” Vaughan says.Okay so we do have to find out who dropped the baby and part of the book works around this, but a far greater part is spent on social issues surrounding post natal depression, relationships, and the need for more support for vulnerable new mothers. Here she moves on to another area in which everyone feels free to criticise any woman perceived as falling short… Painful and realistic, this is a novel that should be read by everyone planning to have a child. Jess says the baby has been crying all night and then started vomiting but when Liz examines her she finds a head injury that Jess can't adequately explain. And I genuinely appreciate Vaughan’s efforts to increase awareness and understanding of postpartum depression. Overall: Even though the story’s pace would be better with some edited parts, I enjoyed the writing, character building and realistic, genuine, argumentative approach of the author.

I mentioned recently in my review for Megan Goldin's, The Night Swim, that I love when this type of novel has something to say about hard-hitting real world issues. Thank you to NetGalley, Sarah Vaughan and Atria, for this free digital ARC in exchange for my honest opinion! She was 19 weeks pregnant with her second baby in July 2007 when she collapsed in the street and crawled home. Although not a thriller, this is an engaging character-driven mystery, delving into what happened to baby Betsey, the events that led up to it and the importance of society and friends in supporting new mothers and recognising when they need help.

She and her physician husband bought a house in Cambridge, where he had taken a new job, and she did it up.

Slowly as we work backwards through the story, told mostly in the voices of Jess and Liz, we find that Jess had an unhappy childhood which is one reason why she has tried to be “perfect”. I have to hand it to Sarah Vaughan, I was so fixated on a certain vein of the storyline that I was thinking this was pretty much a 3 star. Individual characters were experiencing anxiety, holding feelings of inferiority and guilt, and keeping secrets.This is my first Sarah Vaughan book and I’m looking forward to read more works of her as soon as I start trimming my frightening Mount TBR! She interviewed several pediatricians, a perinatal psychiatrist, an obstetrician, a retired detective, and social workers. The way she handled the material made me appreciate this more as a straight fiction read rather than one in the mystery or thriller genre. I would try to get an hour or two of sleep if, and if is the operative word, he went down during the day.