Carola Lovering

From the author of the Hulu sensation Tell Me Lies comes an obsessive, addictive novel about female friendship, a missing baby, and the toxic, secret history between two women.

A Novel

Bye, Baby

This book is pretty twisted but was definitely hard to put down. Very layered thriller.

Amanda 

Ryan Mateyk

On a brisk fall night in a New York apartment, 35-year-old Billie West hears terrified screams. It's her lifelong best friend Cassie Barnwell, one floor above, and she's just realized her infant daughter has gone missing. Billie is shaken as she looks down into her own arms to see the baby, remembering—with a jolt of fear—that she is responsible for the kidnapping that has instantly shattered Cassie’s world.

Above is the publisher's synopsis. This synopsis is, forgive me, stupid. How do you accidentally kidnap your best friend's baby? Despite this, I started reading and was actually pleasantly surprised. It's really well-written, told from alternating narrators, counting down the days to the kidnapping as well as throwing in flashbacks that I found was a compelling way to explore this decades-old friendship. But then, the kidnapping happened about a third of the way through and I was back to thinking it was stupid.

While I enjoyed Billie as a character, Cassie is a terrible terrible person which in itself is not always a detractor... We can handle and even sometimes embrace terrible people in fiction! But she was really annoying, vapid, entitled, and this paired with the (sorry) weak plot (accidental kidnapping?? accidental kidnapping!!?!?) really led me to question why I was still reading. I think I wasn't intended as the target audience for this book (I saw a few reviews mention this is "Women's Fiction"... a woman I am not) but overall, I just didn't really enjoy it. 

Thank you to Goodreads and St. Martin's Press for the ARC. Bye, Baby will be published March 5, 2024.

armoni mayes

this is not your traditional thriller, i suppose it could be more classified as a suspense novel maybe or a literary thriller. i did actually enjoy it even though i was under the impression that it was a standard thriller because it dives deep into what happens when one person makes a mistake and doesn’t know how to fix it.

i have to say that i was expecting a darker reason for the kidnapping but when it came to it for me it showed me that this book wasn’t really about the baby gone missing but about the very messy friendship these two women had. 

as a woman i’ve had plenty of close friendships that have fallen apart for many different reasons so reading this story felt really validating in terms of why we choose to leave a friendship, no matter how hard it’s for us, how painful and traumatic it can be, to find a better way to live our lives, because at the end of the day it’s us that matter the most, how we feel, who we are, what we represent, and if our friends don’t fit in the life we’re making for ourselves then as painful as it can be sometimes the best option is to leave, to walk away and grow up apart from each other. 

auri 🪐

i have to say that i was expecting a darker reason for the kidnapping but when it came to it for me it showed me that this book wasn’t really about the baby gone missing but about the very messy friendship these two women had. 

as a woman i’ve had plenty of close friendships that have fallen apart for many different reasons so reading this story felt really validating in terms of why we choose to leave a friendship, no matter how hard it’s for us, how painful and traumatic it can be, to find a better way to live our lives, because at the end of the day it’s us that matter the most, how we feel, who we are, what we represent, and if our friends don’t fit in the life we’re making for ourselves then as painful as it can be sometimes the best option is to leave, to walk away and grow up apart from each other. 

Billie and Cassie have been best friends since they were eleven. Until they weren't. On the night of Cassie's 35th birthday party, something awful happens: Cassie's daughter is kidnapped. By Bille. What happened to lead to this moment?

This is not a thriller but a contemporary fiction deep-dive into women who grow up and then apart. What binds them together? How they change or don't change, and the pain that all of this causes. I felt so sad for one character while not liking another at all, but understanding both of them. It's a sad story, but I know I'll be thinking about it for quite a while.

Cheri McElroy

Billie and Cassie have been best friends since they were eleven. Until they weren't. On the night of Cassie's 35th birthday party, something awful happens: Cassie's daughter is kidnapped. By Bille. What happened to lead to this moment?

This is not a thriller but a contemporary fiction deep-dive into women who grow up and then apart. What binds them together? How they change or don't change, and the pain that all of this causes. I felt so sad for one character while not liking another at all, but understanding both of them. It's a sad story, but I know I'll be thinking about it for quite a while.

Bye, Baby A Novel

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