Thursday, March 07, 2024

Book Review: REPLACED




Title: Replaced

Author: Nolon King with Lauren Street

Publisher: Sterling and Stone

Pages: 346

My GoodReads Rating: ⭐


I was intrigued by the premise of this book and the writing was good enough to hold my interest.

Jessica Clarke has the perfect life with husband David. And now that David has a new job, and they've bought a new house, things are even better. What makes their life even more perfect is that they've just adopted a baby girl. All of one week, she's their joy, and they've named her Gwen.

Jessica, afraid of flying, drives a U-haul with her belongings from New York to Dallas. David has already flown to their new home with Gwen. Tired and exhausted, Jessica reaches the house only to find that the keys that David has given her don't work. What's worse, there's another woman, a lookalike of hers, in the house, and she's claiming to be Jessica Clarke, David’s wife, who is bonding with her baby, who she calls Bella. The worst thing is that David claims he doesn’t know her, that he has never seen her before.

Now David and the other woman have called in the police and Jessica is hauled in. How will she ever get her home and baby back?


The story is written in the 3rd person PoV of both Jessicas in alternate chapters. In order to ensure clarity for us readers, the authors refer to the first woman as Jessica, and the second as Jess.

It’s not hard to figure out the plot, but to the credit of the authors, they make us feel invested in spite of that. The action just doesn’t let up. 


The only problem lies in their description of Baby Gwen/Bella. The authors clearly don’t know anything about babies. Earlier on, Jessica things she hears the week-old baby chuckling. When the baby is still just a week old, she is shown to sleep calmly through the night for many hours straight. In Chapter 44, the baby is still less than a month old, and yet she plays with blocks and stuffed animals while still an infant. Any parent will tell you that playing with blocks is not a newborn’s thing. The baby claps too. Either it’s an issue that will get corrected or the authors have no idea what babies can or cannot do.

Other than this, it was a fun read.



(I read this book on NetGalley. Thank you to the author, the publisher and NetGalley.) 

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