Hold My Girl

August 14, 2023
Carr’s moving latest (following 2017’s The Stories We Tell) traces a custody battle between two women whose eggs were switched during fertility treatments. After years of trying to conceive, Katherine Matheson and her husband Patrick finally have a child, Rose, who’s now almost a year old. Rose is very fair, which has always made Katherine, a mixed-race Black woman, feel self-conscious. Tess Sokolowski, who dropped out of college after a date rape and subsequent abortion, relies heavily on alcohol to drown her sorrows. Her IVF treatments—undertaken after her divorce, at the same clinic as Katherine’s—ended in the loss of her stillborn daughter. When Irene, the IVF nurse for both women, suddenly confesses that she purposely swapped their eggs, Tess is overjoyed to learn she has a biological child and reaches out to the Mathesons in hopes of working out a custody agreement. But Katherine is terrified of losing Rose and refuses, leaving the matter to be settled by the courts. As the story unfolds, both women contend with secrets that could destroy their claim to Rose. Though the setup provides enough drama to fuel this page-turner, Carr throws in several over-the-top twists that threaten to derail the proceedings. Still, readers will be transfixed. Agent: Hayley Steed, Madeleine Milburn.