Not My Baby

• Author: Anya Mora
• Genre: Mystery/Thriller
• Publication Date: February 19, 2024
• Publisher: Vibrance Press

Thank you to libro.fm and Vibrance Press for providing me with an ALC of this audiobook in exchange for an honest review. 

Never question a mother’s intuition.

My water isn’t supposed to break while there’s a storm raging, when my husband isn’t on the island, and as the power flickers out. Darkness covers the cabin as I cling to my belly. I never imagined it happening like this.

Trained as a midwife, I know I can deliver my daughter.

* * *

I look at her, and I see her — I’ve always known her.

She’s perfect. Sweat and tears streak down my face as I kiss her over and over again. Reaching for my bag of midwifery supplies, I wipe her nose and press her tiny body to my chest.

I fall asleep with her in my arms.

* * *

When I wake, my husband is home, the lights are back on — but the baby he’s holding — it’s not mine.

I’m not crazy.

I gave birth to a girl, and that baby in his arms is a boy.

He’s not my baby.

Please note this is a revised edition of The Midwife’s Mistake. It contains themes of baby loss that some readers may find upsetting.

I wasn’t sure what to expect from this one, but I was curious to see how a psychological thriller would play out as a novella. I didn’t initially realize that it was a revision of a prior novella, but I was intrigued enough to check this one out, and it was at the perfect time, since I had just enough time for a novella before starting my next read.

At first, the story seemed straightforward. We’re introduced to Mags (short for Magnolia), who lives on a remote island and goes into labor during a storm, while she’s home alone. Her husband is away, and the power goes out, leaving Mags to rely on her training and experience as a midwife to deliver her own baby. Thrilled to deliver a healthy baby girl, Mags falls asleep with her daughter in her arms. But when she wakes, her husband is there holding the baby, and it isn’t the daughter that she had just delivered; it’s a newborn boy that she’s never seen before.

Let me start out the review by saying that there are some serious content warnings in this story. Since I listened to this as an audiobook, I didn’t track them the way that I normally do, but the author delves into some pretty heavy subject matter, including infertility, stillbirth, pregnancy loss, grief, and mental illness.

Initially, it was easy to get into Magnolia’s head and empathize with her. She seemed to be rational and have her head on straight, managing to handle the stresses of the end of pregnancy, with a supportive group of women, and a husband that seems to be devoted and caring. It isn’t until we get a little further into the story that the cracks begin to appear. 

Mags and her husband Ivan are expecting a new baby, but this is after their last pregnancy ended in the stillbirth of their daughter. The grief associated with that loss led to an involuntary psychiatric hospitalization for Magnolia, so that immediately added a new layer of tension to the story. While the author didn’t revisit that episode in Magnolia’s life, it is mentioned with enough ambiguity that we have to come to our own conclusions about whether Mags is a reliable narrator or not. I found myself wondering whether or not the events being related had actually happened exactly that way or were being seen differently through Magnolia’s eyes. I kind of loved that it was so ambiguous for so much of the book that we were forced to decide for ourselves whether she was an accurate narrator, but I also kind of disliked that mental illness was used as the reason for it. 

I did understand the reasoning why this specific trope was worked into the novella. It actually speaks to a much larger problem in society, and that is gaslighting women into believing that they are experiencing symptoms of mental illness when their issues are, in fact, valid complaints of other problems such as physical symptoms, stalkers, toxic relationships, stress, or something that has nothing to do with a mental illness. However, the author missed a chance to discuss this at any deeper than a surface level, and it felt like nothing more than a wasted opportunity. 

Overall, this was a hit or miss novella. I get that it can be tough to write a novella in this genre and squeeze a full, suspenseful mystery into such a short story, but this one had some good points and bad. I liked the character of Magnolia, and the way the story unfolded, along with a friendship between two characters that develops. The isolation of the remote islands and the storm rolling in made for an atmospheric setting. However, the pacing was off, with the vast majority of the novella being fairly repetitive and slower-paced, while the last quarter of the story felt rushed with everything wrapping up too easily. I felt especially let down by how things ended, since the story built up to this over-the-top twist, and then it resolved with no conflict at all, even after a major reveal. Unfortunately, one of the major reveals was easy to predict quite far in advance, leaving me feeling like this book was an okay read, and at least it was a quick one.

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