#Review The New Girl by Alison Stockham
The letterbox clatters and sitting on the mat is a piece of paper, in black and white, with everything needed to blow Anna’s perfect life apart.
A baby scan photo.
Anna and Jon have been trying for a baby with no success, so after years of disappointment, this feels like a kick in the teeth.
Who sent it? And why?
Anna’s thoughts fall on Grace – the keen young woman Jon hired at their printing business. Something about Grace isn’t quite right. She asks too many questions and makes Anna nervous but she can’t work out why.
And she can’t deny she sees the way her husband looks at her.
All she knows is this baby scan might tear her marriage apart…
REVIEW
Anna and John have been married seven years and still no signs of starting a family, both have had a traumatic past with Anna losing her child when she was young and John also losing his wife and baby. Now at first I had no idea of their ages and for the longest part of the book until near the end I had Anna in her late forties not around 37 = an irk of mine is not definitely knowing a characters age. They run a printing business and when John suggests bringing in someone to help ease the admin workload Anna isn’t sure, but when it turns out that John has already gone ahead and hired Grace. a young woman he has meet through their church, this gets Anna’s heckles right up.
Grace starts working and Anna struggles to gel with her, especially when she starts asking questions about Anna’s family and upbringing and why she and John don’t have children. Her imagination really starts to run wild when a baby scan is shoved through her door shortly after Grace started working for them, is John and Grace having an affair? is the baby scan Grace’s?
Anna is just all over the place with her imagination connecting dots that don’t exist.
Grace is definitely keeping some kind of secret, and when she discovers that Anna is also hiding a secret from John she gives Anna a ultimatum that brings everything to head revealing past wrong doings. Whilst I saw Grace’s secret coming towards the end, it was still a twist that was heart-breaking, but then it also ended up that Anna didn’t need reveal her secret after all!!
