Baby Doll by Hollie Overton

You’ve been held captive in one room, mentally and physically abused every day, since you were sixteen years old.

Then, one night, you realize your captor has left the door to your cell unlocked.

For the first time in eight years, you’re free.

This is about what happens next …

Lily knows that she must bring the man who nearly ruined her life – her good-looking high-school teacher – to justice. But she never imagined that reconnecting with her family would be just as difficult. Reclaiming her relationship with her twin sister, her mother, and her high school sweetheart who is in love with her sister may be Lily’s greatest challenge. After all they’ve been through, can Lily and her family find their way back after this life-altering trauma?

Impossible not to read in one sitting, Baby Doll is a taut psychological thriller that focuses on family entanglements and the evil that can hide behind a benign facade.

The blurb is pretty spot on actually. I did read it in one sitting because I wanted to know how it would end. It is an easy read and although there are some aspects to the book which I found less than realistic, its certainly fast paced. It’s not an especially difficult book – and I’m not at all sure that the title serves it as well as it might because neither is it a sensationalist book.

Baby Doll focuses on the aftermath of Lily Riser’s escape from Rick with their daughter, Sky and how her return impacts on her family and especially her twin sister Abby.

It takes as its premise a woman, Lily Riser, who has been held in captivity and serially abused by a psychopath.She was abducted by someone she knew – someone in a position of trust – when she was only 16, leaving behind her twin sister Abby, and has been held captive for 8 years.

During that time she has given birth to a daughter, Sky, with whom she has lived in captivity until one day her captor makes a mistake and she is able to escape. The story deals with the issues surrounding her homecoming and the impact that her return has on her twin, her mother and her ex-boyfriend, who has subsequently formed a relationship with Abby.

It’s a novel approach to a thriller and should have been really engrossing. But the characterisation is quite superficial and the complexities of the psychology of someone who has been abused like and the effect on her family are this are skimmed over in the interests of moving the plot forward. Indeed, Lily seems remarkably well adjusted for most of the book.

There is no depth of characterisation and no real tension, just a series of plot lines that drive the book forward. Some are very contrived plot points – especially towards the end of the book when her abductor is in prison.

Though the book is an easy read and actually quite a compelling one, ultimately it reads like a TV script for an American movie of the week. It left me feeling unsatisfied and a bit short changed.

Baby Doll was published by Cornerstone Digital on 30 June 2016